Review: "The Little Stranger"

“The Little Stranger” is a very different sort of ghost story.

There are thumps in the night and strange scratchings on wardrobes and all of that. But it’s more a tale of psychological obsession than supernatural boogums. It’s a claustrophobic, deeply immersive gothic horror film that takes its own sweet time getting to the scares -- and even then they come sideways from where you expected.

Domhnall Gleeson plays Dr. Faraday, a youngish country physician who finds himself summoned for a house call at Hundreds Hall, the crumbling mansion of the noble but decaying Ayers family. He’s intrigued -- his mother worked there as a maid decades ago, and he himself visited the place for a ceremony as a young boy, a grand day that lives large in his memories.

Now, in the post-World War II years, Hundreds is looking more like Dozens. The only residents are the matriarch, Angela (Charlotte Rampling), and her children Roderick (Will Poulter) and Caroline (Ruth Wilson), plus a maid, Betty (Liv Hill), who’s barely into her teens. Every year they have to sell off more of the immense acreage to pay their taxes and keep the brandy cart stocked.

Roddy was in the RAF during the war and left badly scarred and crippled. Faraday -- no first name is every supplied -- has an idea to treat his limp with electrical impulses, and over the next few weeks something like a kinship forms. The mother is serene and superior, her funds meager but her entitlement in high reserves, and she looks upon Farraday as an uppity village boy who made good but will never be their equals.

Caroline is intriguing, though. Described as the smartest of the clan, she’s stuck caring for her brother and mother, not to mention trying to keep the house from falling down around them. While Faraday carefully plays the role of the family friend, Caroline sees to it that most of his attention falls on her. People in the community talk about the state of affairs, but without resentment.

This is a very interior performance by Gleeson, a chameleon-like actor who is quietly asserting himself among the finest performers of his generation. Faraday often wears a stern look, staring at people with a mix of keen observation and concealed longing. With his strawberry locks pasted against his skull and bits of fiery hair above his eyes and lips, he seems both very old and very young at once.

Without giving away too much, it seems the root of the family’s problems lies with the eldest daughter, Susie, who took ill and died not long after Faraday’s childhood visit. Angela becomes convinced that her spirit is still residing in the halls, and physical manifestations start appearing to confirm her suspicions.

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s last film was the mesmerizing “Room,” and some of that same sense of closed-in space is at work here, too. While Hundreds Hall is vast, it weighs upon the characters like a putrefying corpse in danger of suffocating them. Lucinda Coxon (“The Danish Girl”) wrote the screenplay based upon the novel by Sarah Waters.

I appreciated the dusky, warbling moods of “The Little Stranger,” though the film teases out the mysteries of its narrative to the breaking point, and then a little further. It’s mostly interesting as a psychological portrait of a man who is always helpful and polite, the very picture of a true English gentleman, yet seems to have a smudge on his soul he can’t quite blot out.

Video review: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

Some people were upset with me when I dubbed “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” the weakest film in the franchise. But I think it’s an easy call.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t like the movie. I surely do. I’ve adored all the Star Wars films on some level. Again: that doesn’t mean I turn a blind eye to their flaws.

The ninth entrée in the franchise introduces new characters, in addition to the ones we met in “The Force Awakens.” The two most notable newbies are Kelly Marie Tran as Rose, a mechanic with the rebellion who goes off on an (in the end, totally unnecessary) adventure with Finn (John Boyega), and Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Holdo, who takes over leadership of the rebellion when Leia (Carrie Fisher) is laid up.

The plot is essentially one long chase, as the Empire (now called The First Order, but functionally identical) pursues the last remnants of the resistance across space, in a race that becomes a standoff. (Apparently, all large ships in this universe travel at the exact same sub-light speed.) Hothead pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is hatching all sorts of schemes to turn things around, but the lady leaders stay the course.

The real meat of the action takes place with proto-Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley), who seeks out self-exiled Master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to beg him for help. But Luke has become disillusioned and despondent, refusing to join the cause… though he offers Rey a little light Jedi training.

Meanwhile, Darth Vader grandson/heir apparent Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey find themselves sharing a psychic bond through the Force. Their communication leads to an uncomfortable sense of attraction between the two, which will get played out when the pair is eventually presented to the new Emperor, Snoke (Andy Serkis).

That’s a lot of moving pieces -- without even bringing in Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), Yoda (Frank Oz), Maz (Lupia Nyong’o), sneering General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), cosmic lock-picker DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and a few others.

Writer/director Rian Johnson often struggles to formulate all the people and events into a cohesive narrative whole. At a smidge over 2½ hours, this is the longest “Star Wars” movie, and it could greatly have benefited with some tightening of the story.

Still, it’s an enjoyable bit of space opera, filled with massive special effects and action set pieces. The entertainment value is still very, very high. But I find it hilarious that people who love to rag on the “terrible prequels” aren’t willing to train the same level of scrutiny on these newer films.

As we’ve come to expect with “Star Wars” video release, bonus features are pretty spectacular.

These include a feature-length audio commentary track with director Johnson; deleted scenes; footage of Serkis’ on-set portrayal prior to the post-production digital makeover into Snoke; extended breakdowns of three key sequences; “Balance of the Force,” which explores the mythology of the Force; and “The Director and the Jedi,” a feature-length documentary on the making of the movie.

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Video review: "Goodbye Christopher Robin"

It didn’t get a lot of attention during the early awards cycle or sell many tickets, but “Goodbye Christopher Robin” is an absolutely gorgeous film that explores some rather ugly subjects. On the surface it’s a look at the private life of “Winnie-the-Pooh” creator A.A. Milne. But on a deeper level, the movie serves as a portrait of a family whose dysfunction is widened by sudden fame.

Before World War I, Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) was a successful playwright of light comedies. But after being affected by the horrors of combat, he retreated to the countryside to write a treatise on the urgency for peace. He and his wife, Daphne (Marge Robbie), bring along their beloved tyke, Christopher Robin, known to them as Billy Moon (Will Tilston). It would see a perfect bucolic setting to bring them together.

Except… Milne finds he can’t write a word. Daphne tires of the sticks and decamps for the city life. And Billy Moon feels lost between them.

Eventually Milne and his son draw closer, and he crafts a series of stories involving him and a bunch of his stuffed animals, which the writer brings to life. Virtually overnight, Pooh becomes a sensation and Billy is turned into a celebrity, the representation of the perfect British lad. Tours, interviews, public appearances and the like becomes his new normal.

Kelly Macdonald plays Olive, the devoted nanny who largely takes care of Billy Moon while the parents are (often) physically or emotionally absent. She tries to warn them about what the effect of sudden fame could be to a little boy.

For his part, Milne finds himself resenting his own son. The people adored Pooh and Christopher Robin, but somehow the man who conjured them up and put them down on paper becomes almost a bystander.

Perhaps because it’s a challenging look at a family driven apart by money and fame, “Goodbye Christopher Robin” did not get all the consideration it deserved while it was (briefly) in theaters. Here’s hoping it gets a chance on home video.

Bonus features are decent enough, cemented by a feature-length audio commentary track by director Simon Curtis and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce. There are also several promotional featurettes about the production and a gallery of photos from the set.

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Review: "Goodbye Christopher Robin"

If you go into "Goodbye Christopher Robin" expecting, as I did, to see a heartwarming portrait of the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh and how his own family life helped him conjure that whimsical world, you may be a little shocked by the actual film you see. It's more challenging than expected, but ultimately much more rewarding, too.

Directed by Simon Curtis from a screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughan, "Goodbye" is a portrait of a remarkable family, but a dysfunctional one. It's a melancholy story of how parents can love their children but not always do the right thing by them, even as the outside world looks upon their circumstances as enviable -- even wondrous.

This is the tale of the darkness behind the magic.

Domhnall Gleeson plays author A.A. Milne, a decent man ravaged by the horrors of the World War I trenches. Known as Blue to family and friends, he's a typical upper-crust British husband and father, kindly but emotionally distant.

Once the family decamps London for a quiet farm in Sussex, everyone knows not to make loud noises, which trigger fits we now call PTSD, or disturb Blue while he's writing. Problem is, he's not writing. A successful playwright of light comedies before the war, he comes to find himself dissatisfied with this type of work. And he struggles to find a kind that does. Even his notion of a treatise on ending all wars lies fallow.

Margot Robbie plays his wife, Daphne, and this is neither the typical loving mother or shrewish harpy we're used to seeing in the movies. She enjoys the high life of London, but sacrifices her own joy for Blue's need for solitude. She loves their only son, Christopher Robin (Will Tilston) -- known to them as Billy Moon -- with all her heart, but happily shunts most of the day-to-day duties of mothering to the diligent nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald).

(Billy calls her Lou... clearly, this clan loves nicknames.)

Circumstances force Blue and Billy to be alone with each other for a long period of time. They take long walks in the gorgeous forest, play games, have adventures, and slowly draw closer as father and son. Building on the voices Daphne gave to Billy's favorite stuffed animals, Blue starts to create stories to go with them, centered on a kindly teddy bear who acts as a sort of little brother.

Blue enlists illustrator Ernest (E.H.) Shepard (Stephen Campbell Moore), a friend and fellow shell-shocked veteran, to come visit them and start doodling pictures to go along with the words. He includes Billy as a character in the stories, but gives him a false name, which is actually his real name, to draw some distance. For his own part, Billy Moon is a little trepidatious about being portrayed as Christopher Robin.

"If I'm in a book, people might think I'm not real," he says.

Winnie-the-Pooh becomes an international success virtually overnight, surprising everyone. There is joy and pride, but Blue also finds himself strangely resentful of his own son, who becomes an instant celebrity. People adore Christopher Robin as the ideal of childhood innocence, and can't distinguish him from the flesh-and-blood boy, Billy. Meanwhile, the writer stands in his own creation's shadow.

Before long Billy's quiet life in the country has turned into a litany of interviews, public appearances and being recognized wherever they go. Olive tries to warn Blue about the dangerous waters they're drifting into, but Daphne resents the intrusion of someone she sees as merely a servant.

Billy's childhood is happy, but growing up proves to be a much sterner proposition.

"Goodbye Christopher Robin" is a gorgeous film, with dappled sunlight streaming through trees, vivid colors and crisp details. (Ben Smithard was director of photography.) Decked out in beautiful tweed suits (by Odile Dicks-Mireaux) -- even while playing cricket -- Blue is the artist who relates better to his characters than the people they're based upon.

Gleeson is an interesting physical specimen, who can seem awkward and ungainly, or very handsome and masculine, depending on the performance and costumes/makeup. The Robbie character gets shunted to the side somewhat, but that's a reflection of a home life that was much more stilted than presented to the public.

Tilston, with his impossible dimples, is terrific as a little boy dealing with issues and emotions no one his age should have to. Alex Lawther takes over the role of Billy as he gets older, bringing new, less merry notes to the character.

Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin are beloved creations that have stood the test of time for nearly a century. But they are just that: figments based on reality, not representing it.

Review: "American Made"

How much of “American Made” is true and how much is Hollywood hokum?

There’s certainly a healthy helping of the latter, as even a cursory glance at the life of pilot/smuggler/government informant Barry Seal shows. You could go into quibbles -- the movie shows him as married with small kids, but he was already long divorced (twice) when the events depicted commence.

The main departure, though, is showing the “gringo who always delivers” -- drugs, rifles, people, whatever -- as a pawn of the CIA who more or less fell backwards into a massive elicit transport operation. Everything I’ve been able to read in short order about Seal shows he’d already been a smuggler for years, and only went to the feds when he was facing major jail time, offering to be their stooge.

But this is a Tom Cruise star vehicle, not a historical docudrama. The film mostly reminded me of “Blow,” the 2001 film starring Johnny Depp as an unheralded key figure in bringing the South American drug trade to our shores. Seal has actually been depicted on film and television a number of times before, including by Dennis Hopper and Michael Paré.

Taken on its own, “American Made” is a fun, dizzy and convoluted movie that shows how deeply the U.S. government was involved in the mess south of its border in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and indeed to what a large extent those problems we created, as the title suggests.

Cruise smiles and twinkles through it all, affecting a Louisiana drawl to intermittent effect. Director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”) and screenwriter Gary Spinelli set out deliberately to portray Seal as a lovable scamp, when a harder edge is probably required. But aside from one brief foray I can recall, “Collateral,” outright villainy just isn’t in the Tom Cruise toolbag.

The net effect winds up feeling like “Goodfellas” Lite, with the Colombian Medellín Cartel swapped out for Italian gangsters.

The story opens in 1978 with Seal bored with his life as a TWA commercial pilot. (False: the airline had actually fired him six years earlier.) A mysterious young CIA agent, Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson), busts him for sneaking Cuban cigars into the country and offers to set him up with his own hangar and high-end plane.

His job: reconnaissance photos of Sandinistas and other Communist-backed insurgents. A cowboy at heart, Seal enjoys the daredevil flying and even getting shot at. But the money’s not so great, and when Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) and Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) offer to pay him $2,000 per kilo of cocaine he flies into America on the way back from his CIA missions, he has a hard time saying no.

Before long, Seal is running other pilots in and out of South and Central America on virtually a daily basis, picking up guns, trading them for dope, and dropping the drugs in the Louisiana delta. He sets up a network of front companies in tiny Mena, Ark., but still accumulates so much cash that he literally runs out of places to hide it, stuffing it in horse stalls or burying it out back of the house.

“I’ll rake it up tomorrow,” he says when his wife (Sarah Wright) tells him one of his stashes has been breached, cash blowing all around.

Jesse Plemons play the local sheriff paid to look the other way; Caleb Landry Jones is Seal’s idiot brother-in-law whose screw-ups start the downward spiral; Jayma Mays is the state attorney general who wants his head on a platter; Benito Martinez is the head of the DEA, who ratchets up Seal’s involvement straight to the White House.

“American Made” is a tragicomedy about our great nation, worried about getting mired in another Vietnam, creating a smaller version in our backyard. It’s so funny, it hurts.

Video review: "The Revenant"

In my original review of “The Revenant” I predicted it would be a love-it-or-hate-it film, and I was even more right than I knew. People who had a year earlier divided by Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman” quickly chose up sides again, mostly falling into the same camps.

But I switched teams. I thought Iñárritu’s direction mostly showed restraint, using roving cameras and other cinematic tricks largely in service to the story, rather than for their own sake. (As was the case with the overwrought “Birdman.”)

Leonardo DiCaprio deservedly won his first Oscar for his near-wordless portrayal of Hugh Glass, a real 18th-century scout who was mauled by a bear and left for dead by his companions. In their defense, the party was deep in the wilderness and many of them had just been killed in an attack by American Indians, and were still being chased.

Glass spends weeks dragging his maimed body through a barren frozen wasteland, with death waiting at nearly every turn. The film has a spare, harsh beauty to it that’s undeniable.

Tom Hardy is a brooding presence as John Fitzgerald, a Machiavellian member of the group who advocates leaving Glass behind to die, but then volunteers when a large bounty is offered to guard him. Of course, his intentions are less than pure.

I also liked Forrest Goodluck, a novice actor who plays Glass’ half-Indian son. He doesn’t say a lot, but his face conveys much without words.

Based on the “historical novel” by Michael Punke, “The Revenant” can be tough to watch. The bear attack itself, done mostly with CGI, is a technical marvel. The real gruesomeness, though, comes in watching a man who’s literally been torn apart struggle and refuse to die.

It’s a grim existential journey worth the investment of 2½ hours of your time.

Bonus features are disappointingly scanty. The blu-ray comes with a making-of documentary, “A World Unseen” – and that’s it.


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Review: "The Revenant"

I was not a fan of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s work on “Birdman,” which won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, screenplay and directing. I felt the filmmaker undermined Michael Keaton’s masterful performance with his (over)long takes and tracking shots. It stole our attention from the story and performance in favor of the direction, screaming “look at me!”

Iñárritu uses many of the same techniques in “The Revenant,” but much more modestly and effectively. In relating the harrowing story of a frontier trapper mauled by a bear and left for dead by his companions, the director employs his considerable skillset in service to the main character rather than for its own sake.

As Hugh Glass literally crawls hundreds of miles along the ground or plunges into angry icy rivers to escape those who would murder him, the camera work heightens his peril by making it a shared experience. It’s also one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s most compelling performances, and a largely wordless one.

The final result is an exemplary iteration of an old-school form of “you are there” adventure filmmaking that has seen a resurgence with films like “Gravity,” putting the audience right into the action next to the main character. I’m not sure if the film amounts to anything more than a grim and enthralling tale of existential survival, but I admired it for what it is.

Based on a true story, as translated by the “historical novel” by Michael Punke, the screenplay by Iñárritu and Mark L. Smith is narratively similar to last summer’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” in that it begins right in the middle of the action and barely stops. Characters reveal their inner selves through their behavior, not speeches.

A trapping and hunting expedition led by Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) is ambushed by American Indians who want the pelts for themselves – and resent the interlopers fouling their ancestral grounds. Also, the chief (a quietly powerful Duane Howard) searches for his daughter, kidnapped by white men.

Many are killed, but due to Glass’ level-headed leadership they manage to escape downriver, including his own teenage son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), who is part Indian. Flashbacks and rumors divulge that Glass himself lived among the native people for many years, until his wife was killed by French soldiers. This does not endear him to his fellows.

Then Glass, the lead scout, is horrendously wounded when he chances upon a mother grizzly protecting her cubs. It’s hard stuff to watch as a man is tossed around like a rag doll, even harder when his clothes are removed to reveal ghastly rents in his flesh.

Glass seems sure to die, and John Fitzgerald, a self-serving member of the party played with morose charisma by Tom Hardy, urges them to put Glass out of his misery, as the Indians are still in pursuit. But Henry offers a large bounty to anyone who will stay behind with Glass until he dies, then give a proper burial.

Fitzgerald volunteers to join Hawk and another boy, Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), in guarding the man. But greed and fear lead to tragic results, and Glass wakes from his coma to find himself all alone, near death and without any tools or provisions. All he can do is scrape his bones along the rugged ground.

This section is just merciless to watch, a proud man reduced to a wasted expanse of bloody flesh and a few primordial instincts. At one point Glass finds some clean water to drink, but discovers that it leaks out of his torn throat before it can make its way down his gullet. He perseveres, and persists.

“The Revenant” is an enthralling film to look upon, nearly monochromatic and with a sort of spare, harsh beauty. I suspect this movie will divide audiences, many of whom will not care for its wintry tale of death and revenge. For those who can appreciate bleakness, it’s a haunting vision that lingers.

Review: "Brooklyn"

“Brooklyn” is melodramatic, and I mean that as a compliment.

It’s an extremely well-made picture in the tradition of Golden Age director Douglas Sirk, whose films like “All That Heaven Allows” and “Imitation of Life” unabashedly focused on women’s struggles and interior anguish in domestic settings and romantic entanglements. I guess you could call it a “chick flick,” though that usually connotes frivolous movies in the romcom mold.

Though certainly a romantic story, “Brooklyn” is kind-hearted and sober. It’s about a young Irish girl who emigrates to New York City in 1952 and her attempts to integrate into the American life while desperately missing the one she had back home.

Based on a novel by Colm Tóibín, the screenplay is by Nick Hornby (“An Education”) and the film was directed by John Crowley (“Intermission”). It’s one of those movies that if you sit back afterward and enumerate the events, you’ll find that there really isn’t too much to the plot. But the film’s emotional energy, buoyed by a confident lead performance by Saoirse Ronan, gives the story plenty of momentum.

Ellis Lacey is a smart girl who works in shop in a small town. Her father is long dead, mother (Jane Brennan) is getting to an age where she needs looking after and sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) appears ready to shoulder that burden alone, as Ellis dreams of a life away from the tightly bookended one she has.

It’s not that she resents her home, but the endless gossip, carefully stratified classes and seemingly generic pool of young men render it unexciting.

Through the help of a kindly Irish-American priest (Jim Broadbent), she obtains passage to New York, a job at Bartocci’s, an upscale department store, and a room in a boarding house run by a sharp-tongued landlady (the great Julie Walters). Brooklyn of this area was teaming with Irish immigrants, who have their own businesses, social and religious circles, so at first it barely seems like she’s left.

Of course, Ellis is burdened with the guilt of having left her mother and sister alone, which is soon compounded by events. She finds solace in the arms of Tony (Emory Cohen), an Italian-American plumber who has a bit of a Gene Kelly thing going -- looks and geniality, if not musical talent.

(Keep an eye out for young James DiGiacomo as Tony’s kid brother, a born scene-stealer.)

They initiate a tender, halting romance, as Ellis begins to gain confidence and spread her wings as an individual, enrolling in night school on the way to becoming an accountant -- the only woman in her class. But circumstance brings her back to Ireland – only briefly, she insists -- and one of the local lads (sad-eyed Domhnall Gleeson) makes her think of the life she could have had.

It’s a delightful movie, mournful without being sappy and joyous while avoiding maudlin overreach. In the end it’s a simple tale of a young woman finding her way, choosing between two homes that each hold more promise than she initially would’ve guessed.

Video review: "Ex Machina"

“Ex Machina” is an ambitious science fiction drama that focuses on an aspect of human nature you rarely see explored in the genre: lust.

Ostensibly, writer/director Alex Garland’s film is about a robot that seems to have crossed the threshold into human-like sentience. But really, it’s a tale of sexual attraction between man and machine, and all the troubling consequences that entails.

Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a young programmer who has won a contest to spend a week at the remote domicile of his company’s super-rich founder, Nathan (Oscar Isaac). A wunderkind billionaire, Nathan lives virtually alone in an antiseptic research facility with only his creation, Ava (Alicia Vikander), a robot that he thinks could be the world’s first man-made person.

Ava cannot physically pass for human: except for a fleshy face and appendages, she’s an elegant mix of metal parts. But during their long interview sessions Caleb begins to develop feelings for her, which Ava seems to return.

All the time, Nathan is watching, studying, judging. He needles Caleb with the information that Ava has been outfitted with parts to accommodate coupling with a human. Nathan can be charming one minute and bullying the next. His relationship to Ava is somewhat akin to a zookeeper who considers whether the animals were better left in the wild.

It’s an extremely engaging film, though I felt Garland avoided too many risks in his storytelling that could have led to more interesting places, plot-wise. For instance, it’s implied at one point that maybe it’s Caleb himself who is the robot, and this exercise has been his own Turing Test. That would have been a twist, but it becomes the road not taken.

“Ex Machina” is a movie that starts out with boldness and then travels too straight a line for its own good.

Video extras are a bit underwhelming. There’s a making-of featurette, footage of a Q&A with the cast and crew from South by Southwest Festival and eight behind-the-scenes vignettes.

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Review: "Ex Machina"

Moody and evocative, “Ex Machina” is a well-made science fiction thriller that I quite admired even as I realized it didn’t reach its full potential. It starts out with a very novel concept and moves forward with it in such a direct way that it held very few surprises.

It seems like a smart movie that outsmarted itself.

The idea is the creation of the first real artificial intelligence by mankind, manifested in a robot named Ava. She has been built as an expressly female entity with all the imperatives of attraction that entails. So a man -- technically brilliant but socially awkward -- interacts with her and begins to develop feelings.

This premise is not entirely original; other movies like “S1m0ne” and “Her” have explored the idea of a guy falling for a virtual construct, with varying degrees of success. Writer Alex Garland (“Never Let Me Go”), who also makes his directing debut, cleverly adds the idea of the third wheel: the man who created the robot, has hired the other man to test it, and watches the two of them interact with some apparent mix of scientific inquiry and malevolence.

The result is a weird, disquieting love (?) triangle in which three beings, one of them mechanical, wage a struggle of wills.

Oscar Isaac plays Nathan, a genius programmer who created Bluebook, the world’s dominant search engine, while still a teenager. (Think Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, combined.) Now he lives in a research facility in the middle of a vast mountainous estate, where the only way in is a two-hour helicopter ride. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a meek young coder in his employ, wins a contest for a special week-long stay with a life-changing (but unspecified) opportunity.

The underground domicile, with weird amalgamations of modern and traditional appointments, is something between a retreat and a prison. Caleb can go some places but not others. It’s comfortable, antiseptic and stifling. Like the hotel in “The Shining,” it serves as another character in the story.

Nathan lives there seemingly alone, bingeing on work, alcohol and exercise. He’s at once very charismatic and off-putting. He jokes with Caleb about having the men who installed his power grid killed afterward, and seems to enjoy the ambiguity his tone leaves in the younger man’s mind. He tells Caleb that he has created an A.I., and he has been chosen to test it to see if it can pass as human.

Caleb’s first interactions with Ava are hesitant and promising. She is an amazing creation, played by Alicia Vikander with some arresting makeup and CG effects. Her face, hands and feet are seemingly human, but the rest of her is a twist of metal parts, lighted circuitry and a geodesic mesh covering.

They interact through a glass wall; Ava has apparently never left the room in which she lives. Despite this distance, they soon start to share intimacies about themselves. Given the opportunity for more private conversation, they each reveal their suspicions about Nathan’s true motives.

Things go from there, which I will not reveal. Suffice it to say that on several occasions I thought Garland had an opportunity to take a sharp turn into bolder territory, and each time he chooses the straightforward course. There’s one bit where the story starts to wander down a more interesting path, but quickly retreats to the road more traveled.

“Ex Machina” hints at deeper themes that are largely left unexplored -- how men objectify women, can consciousness be created artificially, etc. But for what it is, I recommend the film for its dark imaginings.

Review: "Unbroken"

“Unbroken” is the sort of story that if it weren’t true, people would dismiss it as Hollywood hoo-ha. But Louis “Louie” Zamperini really lived this life: Olympic athlete who competed at the 1936 games in Berlin, WWII bombardier whose plane crashed into the Pacific, surviving 47 days at sea before being captured and subjected to two years of torment as a prisoner of war.

This movie, which I think one of the most powerful of the year, hasn’t received much love from other critics, and I find that puzzling. Is it the presence of Anjelina Jolie as director, and a certain snootiness towards glamorous movie stars stepping behind the camera? If so, I’ll just remind them people said the same thing about Clint Eastwood and Mike Nichols … and they didn’t turn out too bad.

To my mind, Jolie acquits herself splendidly, hitting the emotional high and low notes just right, as well as staging a few daring action scenes. Clearly, she’s got a future behind the camera if she carries out her threat to abandon acting.

Chiding of the screenplay seems more well-placed. The script has some big names on it – Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese, William Nicholson – as well as being based on a book by Laura Hillenbrand, who also penned the splendid “Seabiscuit.”

But it is a fairly conventional narrative presentation. And, as others have pointed it, it almost seems to combine elements of three famous Oscar-winning films into one: the Olympics sequence from “Chariots of Fire,” the lifeboat part from “Life of Pi” and the POW stuff from “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” 

Oh well. The historical record is what it is. The movie also truncates the latter portion of Hillenbrand’s book, which deals with Zamperini’s (unsurprisingly) difficult transition to civilian life and religious awakening.

Jack O’Connell is solid as Zamperini, but I do think this sort of movie might have been better served by having a more recognizable actor in the main role. Since the screenplay doesn’t really attempt to get inside the character’s head, but observes his trials and tribulations from without, audiences might have a harder time connecting emotionally with him. We need more of a touchstone.

The supporting cast is terrific. I especially liked Domhnall Gleeson as Phillips, the pilot of the bomber that crashes into the ocean, who has a sort of reserved grace, and Jai Courtney and Garrett Hedlund as fellow POWs, who know they can’t help him directly when the guards are beating him to a pulp, but cheer on silently.

If I have one serious complaint with the movie, it’s Japanese singer/actor Miyavi as the sadistic head guard the prisoners refer to as “The Bird,” because he sees everything. Most of what’s depicted really happened – the Bird was sent into hiding as a war criminal after Japan’s surrender.

OK, so he’s a bad guy. But the film turns him into a cloying, effeminate monster who sidles up to his charges and whispers in their ear before delivering a beating. His eyes even look odd, like he’s been made up with excessive mascara or something. The end result is the Bird feels like a cartoon, much like the Michael Fassbender character in “12 Years a Slave.”

It’s like they’re trying to cram all the evil of an era into a single figure, and it rings false.

Still, “Unbroken” was one of the most riveting cinematic experiences I had this year. The lesson of Louie Zamperini isn’t that he was tougher and braver than everyone else, but that this power to withstand desperate challenges resides in all of us if we can find it.

Review: "About Time"

Most romantic movies follow a familiar pattern so slavishly their endings seem preordained. The happy couple walks off into the sunset, there is maybe a proposal of marriage, perhaps snapshots of the wedding over the closing credits.

The charming and ambitious “About Time” reaches that point about halfway through, and keeps going. We follow the couple as their journey continues into settled marriage, child birth and rearing, struggles with careers and the loss of older loved ones. The fact it also involves time travel is merely a quirk.

I enjoyed the first part of the film, even as it seemed as if writer/director Richard Curtis was laboring to repeat his success with “Love Actually” from a decade ago. Domhnall Gleeson, son of Brendan and best known as one of the Weasley brothers in the “Harry Potter” movies, plays a typical uptight British romantic leading man, stammering adorably through his misadventures with women.

But just when the movie reached its natural stopping point, it continued onward and found a deeper, richer tale to tell about what it means to be in love. When you’re young and it’s new, love is about the flash and flame of passion. Later on, one must stoke the fire to keep it going, and learn to appreciate the low, slow burn of everyday life.

The story opens with Tim (Gleeson) age 21 and being given the news by his father (a spot-on Bill Nighy): all the men in their family have the ability to travel through time. Simply go into a dark place, clench your fists and think about a point earlier in your life, and you’ll be there.

There are caveats: you can only revisit times and places in your own life -- so Tim can’t, say, decide to take a jaunt with King Tut in prehistoric Egypt. The future’s off-limits, too. Mostly it’s an opportunity to revisit events that didn’t go so well and try again, dad instructs. Tim uses his trial run to return to a New Year’s Eve party where he failed to kiss the slightly awkward girl at midnight, leaving her crushed, and lay on a fantastic smooch.

This sets the stage for the rest of Tim’s time travel: “For me, it was always going to be about love.”

He spends the next hour or so of screen time wooing Mary (Rachel McAdams), a winsome American and fellow Londoner. They share a lovely blind date – literally in the blind; it takes place in a pitch-black restaurant with blind waiters – and hit it off. But Tim must redo the evening to help out a family friend (Tom Hollander) in dire need, and can’t be in two places at once.

First he must track her down, but finds in the week interval she has acquired a boyfriend. He tries again by intervening at the party where they met. He even hits rewind on their first night in bed to upgrade the lovemaking from adequate to epic.

The movie is often raucously humorous – the part where Tim gets to try out various chums as his best man so he can experience how awful their wedding toasts would be is just gut-busting funny.

If this sounds too gimmicky, like a Brit version of “Groundhog Day,” then you’ll be happy to know that Curtis cuts the antics off just before it becomes tedious. Instead Tim must deal with the outlier realities of being able to alter events, including a heartbreaking one involving children.

“About Time” morphs from a frothy romcom into an insightful meditation on life, love and cherishing the immediacy of workaday existence. As time goes on (and backwards, and forwards) Tim finds himself less and less tempted to hop back to put a new spin on things. We also learn poignant things about his father, who mostly used his “extra days” to read books and spend time with his children.

I admit I went into “About Time” expecting little. Instead, I discovered a romantic movie with a mountain of smarts as well as heart. That doesn’t happen too often.

Review: "Anna Karenina"

In adapting Leo Tolstoy’s iconic novel “Anna Karenina” for the screen, director Joe Wright (“Atonement”) and screenwriter Tom Stoppard (“Shakespeare in Love”) have gotten too clever by half. The result is a sprawling, overly ornamented mess in which the theatricality of the production overwhelms the storytelling.

I don’t generally get too cynical about the motivations of filmmakers, but this movie seems like it was made with Oscar ambitions in mind. From the classic literary touchstone to the extravagant costumes/sets and high-toned performances, everything has a very self-satisfied pedigreed feel to it. I don’t mind films with ambition and even a little swagger, but in this case the braggadocio is misplaced.

Wright and Stoppard run afoul by adopting the notion of Tolstoy’s novel as a grand stage play in which the characters are both audience members and participants. Many scenes involve Anna and the people around her attending the theater, and then our perspective shifts so now they are performing in front of the lights. Or they go about their daily lives, with stagehands moving the scenery around into place and placing props in the characters’ hands, just in time for them to deliver their dialogue.

This is a bold concept, and one that might have worked better of exercised consistently. But the theme goes away for long stretches at a time, so when we are abruptly reminded of the filmmakers’ conceit – say, when Anna’s husband watches his children frolicking in a field, and then the camera pulls back to reveal the entirety of the theater filled with wildflowers – the effect is more discombobulating than thought-provoking.

Tolstoy’s story is stripped down – how could it not be for the famously long-winded author? – but the bones of the tale remain. Anna (Keira Knightley) is a member of Tsarist Russia’s pampered nobility circa 1874. Married to Alexei Karenin (Jude Law), a rich and powerful senior government official, Anna is seen as an irreproachable woman of high society.

But then she falls for a dashing young cavalry officer named Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and finds her world crumbling around her. Even when faced with social ruin and estrangement from her children, Anna finds herself unable to tear away from her powerful desires.

“You are the murderer of my happiness,” Anna whispers in Vronsky’s ear during their first frenetic, almost violent coupling – which should give you a flavor of the sort of arch dialogue spoken throughout the film.
Knightley tries valiantly, but is not entirely convincing in the role of a woman torn asunder by forbidden love.

Part of that has to do with her androgynous looks -- she's beautiful and alluring, but in a curiously sexless way. It's not necessarily a bad thing for an actress -- Audrey Hepburn possessed the same quality. But it makes roles in which passion is the major dynamic a challenge for her.

Taylor-Johnson primps and smirks, and we never really get to see any layers beneath the superficial one the story presents. Since the audience immediately recognizes Vronsky as a cad, it only diminishes Anna that she falls for him so completely.

Law is terrific as Karenin, a man who gives his wife utter devotion but little in the way of intimacy or emotional connection. It's not that he withholds these qualities, but rather that he simply does not have them in his makeup. He does give Anna all that he does have to offer, and is genuinely crushed when that is not enough for her. Ostensibly the villain of the piece, Karenin ends up being the most identifiable person we encounter.

I respect the cast and crew of "Anna Karenina" for trying to do something different with a classic tale. But even sincere experiments sometimes fail.

2 stars out of four