Reeling Backward: "Air Force One" (1997)

"Air Force One" was one of those movies that, even when it came out, people instantly recognized it for exactly what it what was: effective, jingoistic entertainment in which we get to root for our national leaders as legit butt-kicking heroes instead of the shrunken egotists and feeble pretenders they've largely become. 

President Bill Clinton would screen the movie at the White House twice, no doubt happy to share the limelight with Mr. Indiana Jones himself, Harrison Ford, as his alpha-male stand-in, James Marshall. He's a Vietnam vet and Medal of Honor winner who goes toe-to-toe with a group of splinter Russian terrorists who have hijacked his eponymous plane.

The timing of the film's arrival is funny, since at the time we had turned out one legit war hero to elect a waffling draft-dodger, who would then win a strong reelection campaign against another, crippled war hero. It seems people like the idea of a president who lays it on the line, shooting guns and throwing haymakers, only in the abstract.

Written by Andrew W. Marlowe, his first feature film (and one of only three), "Air Force One" is notable for its tight, interlocking layers of storytelling and fantabulous cast. It's one of the leanest two-hour movies you'll ever see, and besides the perennially underrated Ford it also boasts Glenn Close, Gary Oldman, William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, Dean Stockwell and Xander Berkeley.

And, of course, it's directed by German master Wolfgang Petersen, who came to America and had a great two-decade run -- "Troy," "In the Line of Fire," "Outbreak" -- before being sunk by "Poseidon." Petersen is terrific at taking stories with lots of moving pieces and disparate characters and assembling it all so it clicks into a cohesive whole.

I was surprised watching it again for the first time in at least a decade how much geopolitical intrigue there is in the film. In the fictional world of the movie, the U.S. and Russia are chummy and have just deposed the dictator of Kazakhstan, Gen. Ivan Radek (Petersen pet Jürgen Prochnow), who oversaw a mass refugee exodus and threatened to use nuclear weapons.

Marshall has just declared a new interventionist stance on the world stage -- with the centerpiece being that they will take the fight to terrorists and oppressors instead of negotiating with or accommodating them.

So, of course, he's immediately faced with a situation where the president must choose between the welfare of his own family and staff or giving into a Russian terrorist, Ivan Korshunov (Oldman), who wants Radek sprung from prison.

Actual American interventionism would, of course, lead to some very dire outcomes not too many years down the line.

Korshunov gets a couple of chilling speeches that I'm sure went right over the heads of American audiences in the middle of the dot-com boom. Responding to the bitter denunciation of the First Lady, Grace Marshall (Wendy Crewson), that he has just murdered an innocent woman, Korshunov spits back:

"You, who murdered a 100,000 Iraqis to save a nickel on a gallon of gas, are going to lecture me about the rules of war?!?" This is a reference to the first Persian Gulf War, lauded around the world as a high point for American might married with collaborative diplomacy -- but not without its collateral damage.

Later, finally confronting the president in person, Korshunov rejects Marshall's insistence that he can't just call the Russian leader and have Radek released. Three years before Vladimir Putin came into power, Korshunov gives voice to a sentiment that was already gaining volume in the former Soviet Union.

"You talk as you have nothing to do with this. This is all your doing, this infection you call freedom -- without meaning and without purpose. You have given my country to gangsters and prostitutes. You have taken everything from us! There's nothing left!"

It's a little foggy about what Korshunov intends to do if his scheme works -- replace the weak Russian president with Radek? Of course, elaborate plots by heavily accented villains in the movies tend to have very limited steps. (See Gruber, Hans.)

The middle of the movie is essentially one real-time cat-and-mouse chase, with the Russians posing as journalists to get aboard Air Force One, then easily overpowering the Secret Service with the help of one of their own, Gibbs (Berekeley). For some reason, we never learn Gibbs' backstory or why he would undertake such treachery. He's actually treated as just one of the other hostages, until the very (literal) last minute.

Everyone thinks Marshall has safely gotten away in the escape pod, but secretly he hid in the bowels of the airplane and seeks to save his wife and daughter, along with everyone else.

"Air Force One" was in a lot of ways the apotheosis of the phenomenon of "Die Hard on a..." rip-offs, with "Speed" giving us "Die Hard on a Bus" and this being the "on a plane" variation. (Though, really, "Passenger 57" did that a few years earlier.) The basic concept is the same: the hero is trapped in a confined space with murderous forces and innocent bystanders, and has to puzzle out a solution.

Smartly, rather than just making the plane seem like an amorphous behemoth, the movie essentially divides it into a few key sections where the all the action takes place. The hostages are held on the main passenger level, with regular seats in the back and private space and a larger conference room for the POTUS and his staff up front.

Marshall is largely confined to the lowest deck filled with baggage, blinking gizmos that'll become important later, and the loading ramp -- which, along with the escape pod and a few other features highlighted in the film, didn't actually exist in the real presidential aircraft. He makes a few forays upstairs when he can, or draws the terrorists down to him by dumping the plane's fuel.

Korshunov mostly stays in the command center that's a half-flight up from the presidential quarters, along with the cockpit where his pilot (Elya Baskin) handles the flying, though as we'll see the fancy plane is practically autonomous, even ripping the steering column away from manual control when it's performing evasive maneuvers against incoming missiles.

Probably about a quarter of the action cuts away to the White House, where the Vice President, Kathryn Bennett (Close), tries to keep a tamp on the situation while dealing with a bunch of alpha male officials who would love to push her out of the way. Stockwell plays the defense secretary who has an "I'm in control here" moment in the Alexander Haig school; Hall is the Attorney General offering counsel; and Bill Smitrovich appears to be the top military brass at the table.

It was a pretty big deal in 1997 for a mainstream movie to depict a female vice president as an ordinary thing, in much the same we got our first black president in "Deep Impact" a decade before the real one. Bennett is shown as smart, tough and willing to make the hardest calls -- even with sexist taunts from Korshunov about sweating through her silk blouse.

Interestingly, for all our talk lately of "the 25th Amendment" option for deposing a U.S. president, it actually nearly happens in the movie. The A.G. obtains the signatures of a majority of the cabinet to declare Marshall unable to carry out his duties, and all it requires is for Bennett to sign off and become president. Her final moment of triumph in the movie is ripping up this declaration, thus proving both her mettle and loyalty.

Jerry Goldsmith shows up with one of his most most brass-heavy music scores, horns blasting out militaristic marches that land just this side of overwrought.

Is there more to "Air Force One" than it seems? I don't really think so. It's a very well done, manipulative (I mean that as a compliment) thriller with just enough political overtones to sound on the level without getting into any serious America-bashing.

Many other movies have done similar things, so here's what that can look like when it's done with an A-list cast, director and production values. This is the sort of Hollywood contraption that you go into knowing exactly what you're going to get, and come out mightily pleased that you got it.

Reeling Backward: "Patriot Games" (1992)

In my book "The Hunt for Red October" is pretty well a perfect movie. Its sequel, "Patriot Games," is not. It's still a taut, worthy political thriller that's interesting for changing lead actors in the middle of what would become a film trilogy.

Strictly speaking, the events in "Patriot Games" precede those of "Red October" in the Jack Ryan timeline, which was actually the first novel by Tom Clancy to feature what would become his signature character. At the time Ryan was a young professor of military history, probably in his late 20s or early 30s, and had not yet gone to work for the CIA.

This was believable for Alec Baldwin, then a svelte 32 and just coming off the success of "Red October" two years earlier. It was much less so for Harrison Ford, a few weeks from turning 50 when the sequel came out.

But Ford was at that time arguably the biggest box office star in the world, having just wrapped up the Indiana Jones series (for a while), earned his second Oscar nomination for "Working Girl" and been cheated out of a third for "Presumed Innocent." The studio chiefs were doubtless happy to swap out the relatively unknown Baldwin for megastar Ford... though "Games" actually earned slightly less than "Red October" in ticket sales.

The 1994 follow-up, "Clear and Present Danger," is generally regarded as the weakest of the trio but actually was the biggest commercial hit.

Various tales have wandered around Hollywood over the years why the switch was made. Officially Baldwin claimed he wanted to return to his first love of Broadway and had already committed to acting in "Streetcar Named Desire." "Red October" director John McTiernan had originally wanted Ford to play Ryan in that film and saw a chance to get him.

More recently Baldwin wrote in a blog post that he was pushed out in favor of an unnamed huge movie star, who was owed a lot of money for a greenlit picture that fell apart. Giving this star "Patriot Games" would square him with the studio, so a bunch of unreasonable demands were placed on Baldwin, including committing to an open-ended shooting schedule that would endanger his Broadway gig, to encourage him to drop out.

Producer Mace Neufeld, who has shepherded all the Jack Ryan movies including the reboots in 2002 (with Ben Affleck) and 2014 (Chris Pine), has said Baldwin had already exited the film before Ford was signed. But McTiernan himself largely confirmed Baldwin's version of events.

McTiernan has had his own problems, including long legal/financial troubles and a stint in prison for hiring a snoop to wiretap a producer with whom he was squabbling. He actually signed on to make "Clear and Present Danger" first, but stepped out when the studio pressed ahead with "Patriot Games," in which the villains are Irish terrorists.

As an Irish-American McTiernan declined to be involved, and seasoned Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm") was brought in, and went on to direct the last film in the trilogy, too.

There doesn't seem to have been much of an attempt to establish continuity between the Jack Ryan character as played by Baldwin and Ford. The latter's is a resolute everyman hero in the Gregory Peck mold, a family man and straight-arrow patriot who is reluctant to get involved in violence and political intrigue, but finds he has a talent for it.

Baldwin's Ryan has a snide edge to him, a more caustic wit and a bit of primping ego. Even though Ford's one of my favorite film actors, I don't mind saying I found Baldwin's take on the character to be sharper.

But that also worked better in "Red October," where Ryan basically acted as our eyes and ears through which the audience engages the real central character, Sean Connery's Marko Ramius. I don't think people would've wanted to watch two more movies watching a guy who's basically a benevolent a-hole.

I was surprised watching "Patriot Games" again recently how streamlined and tight it is. Clancy's books tend to be fat with lots of side plots and supporting characters -- "techno-thrillers," as they came to be known, more noted for cunning postulations about potential real-world events than deep characterizations or lilting prose.

Screenwriters W. Peter Iliff and Donald E. Stewart real scrape the story down to the barest bone. It's a straight revenge tale with Ryan disrupting a kidnapping attempt on Lord Holmes (James Fox) and his family while visiting England, killing the 16-year-old brother of wolf-like terrorist Sean Miller. Miller is sprung from prison by his IRA-offshoot comrades and spends the rest of the movie trying to kill Ryan, his wife, Cathy (the always-luminous Anne Archer), and their young daughter, Sally (Thora Birch).

In the book the targets of the initial attack were actually Prince Charles and Princess Diana, though they were changed to a non-existent cousin of the Queen for the film. He comes across as something of a good-natured nobleman dolt, unaware that it's his chief aide, Geoffrey (Hugh Fraser), who's tipping off the Irish.

Patrick Bergen plays Kevin O'Donnell, Miller's calculating leash-holder, and Polly Walker is Annette, his spy/girlfriend. J. E. Freeman is a cranky figure as Marty Cantor, a senior boss at the CIA who resents the young upstart Ryan. (Fun fact: Freeman was actually four years younger than Ford.)

Alun Armstrong and David Threlfall play Irish law enforcement types who work for the Brits and spend much of the middle of the move chasing after O'Donnell, Miller and their crew. The latter has a terrific death scene after being foiled by the terrorists, his face pressed to the street and gruffly telling them, "Get on with it and be on your way" right before he's slain.

Samuel L. Jackson plays Robby Jackson, Ryan's dependable Navy buddy, and Richard Harris has a small but vibrant part as Paddy O'Neil, a "bagman" for the IRA who tries to weasel a line between O'Donnell's splinter group and playing the reasonable mick for the television cameras.

James Earl Jones reprises his role as Admiral James Greer from "Red October," pretty much the only holdover actor. He and Ryan have an interesting relationship, part father/son, part mentor/student and not a little bit king/annointed heir. As the CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, Greer reassures without coddling, manipulates without cold-heartedness.

Greer gets the best out of Ryan by helping him find his way instead of pointing it out for him -- a patron who's never patronizing.

Greer knows how to compartmentalize the uglier aspects of his job, like sending special military forces to assassinate the residents of a secret camp in the Libyan desert based on Ryan's educated -- but hardly certain -- guess that this is where Miller is. This scene plays out with sad, scary music as Ryan watches satellite thermal images of bodies falling to the ground, horrified when another man in the room blithely calls out "That's a kill" while slurping his coffee.

"Patriot Games" was also the big breakout role in America for Sean Bean as Miller. He's so lean and rakish, and is completely committed to getting revenge that it blinds him to all other obligations. This part led to playing a Bond villain and Boromir in "The Lord of the Rings," which helped cement his semi-iconic status as someone adept at playing morally ambiguous characters.

Bit of neat trivia: during their final showdown aboard a motorboat through speeding through a storm -- absent from the novel -- Ford accidently struck Bean with the anchor both characters use as a weapon, giving him a permanent scar over his left eye. It required several stitches and they ended up working it into the movie, covering Bean's real wound with blood makeup.

Ford is famous for his chin scar, and it's a bit of Hollywood legend for him to give one of his own to Bean. It actually helped Bean secure the role of Napoleonic soldier Sharpe in the long-running British series of television movies.

I won't argue that "Patriot Games" is the equal of "The Hunt for Red October," because it's not. But they're also very different films, more cousins than siblings. Let's put it this way: I think Alec Baldwin could play Jack Ryan, because nobody knew who either one of them was. Harrison Ford played Harrison Ford in his movie, because that's what movie stars do.

Reeling Backward: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008)

No, we're not reeling back very far this week. The fifth installment of the Indiana Jones chronicle was supposed to come out in 2020, but has been pushed back to the following year. That gives us a chance to look back on the mightily controversial previous one, 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

It seems like it's been forever since that film, but if the schedule holds it will have only been 13 years since the last Indy movie, whereas it was 19 years between 1989's "The Last Crusade" and "Skull."

This seems like a good time to ruminate on the passage of time in film franchises and the aging process of actors.

There were a whole bunch of old jokes about the movie and in the movie, as star Harrison Ford was in his mid-60s when "Skull" was made. (The original trilogy roughly covered his 40s.) Pop culture was inundated with quips about him being the same age as Sean Connery was when he played Indiana Jones' doddering old dad in "Crusade."

In point of fact: Ford was several years older than Connery was, since in actuality the two actors are merely 12 years apart in age.

Ford will be 78 or 79 as they wrap up shooting of the sixth Indy movie, whose title is still a secret. Since all the movies have roughly tracked with the actor's actual age at the time they were made, it would seem the new one will be set in the 1970s.

Thanks to "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," the underrated TV series that ran from 1989 to 1993 (plus a few made-for-TV movies that were later re-edited into more serial episodes), the character's birth year is firmly established as 1899. Easy for me to remember, as it's also my paternal grandfather's.

George Hall played "Old Indy," the contemporaneous "host" of the TV show, who then would have been in his 90s. Notably, by then Indy had lost his right eye and wore a patch beneath wire-rim glasses. I'll be interested to see if this injury is explained in the new movie, sort of the way Ford's real-life chin scar was added into "The Last Crusade."

Astounding fact: When he stars in the next movie Ford will be older than Hall was when he played Old Indy.

Seeing "Skull" for the first time in many years, I was struck how frail Ford already appears to be in the action scenes. He actually moves around pretty well, including some jumps and swings he apparently executed himself. He even wriggles feet-first through a small opening between the cargo area of a truck and its cabin, looking relatively spry.

No, it's the punches where this Indy pulls his.

Old-school stunts have been a calling card of the Indiana Jones series, including plenty of fistfights. Punches are always accompanied by a signature sound effect that sounds more like a whiplash than the collision of flesh and bone.

Here we get the same aural crack while Ford's punching arms appear to be moving in slow motion. Indy's enemies -- the Russians this time -- still fly around the screen like they've been struck by a charging bull. The result is the fight scenes seem comically fake.

In general Indy subcontracts most of the heavy fighting to the greaser teenage character, Mutt Williams, in what is seen as Shia LaBeouf's breakout into adult roles. Of course (half-hearted spoiler warning here), about halfway through the movie it's revealed that Mutt is the son of Indy and his long-lost (or mislaid) lady love, Marian Ravenwood (Karen Allen, eternally radiant).

It's Mutt who takes on Irina Spalko, the sword-carrying scientist/kook played by Cate Blanchett in a torrid Ukranian accent that's just begging for a "moose and squirrel" reference. They duel with blades while each standing in the back of vehicles speeding through the Amazonian jungle in one of the film's signature scenes.

Spalko and Indy never exchange more than a few harsh words. Oh, I think she slaps him once.

Mutt first appears wearing EXACTLY the same outfit Marlon Brando did in "The Wild One," right down to the motorcycle and skewed riding cap. Once he and Indy start talking and he references his mother, I think most people guessed at his progeny. When Marian turns up as his mom, the cat's out of the bag and we're just waiting for the reveal to arrive. Mutt and Indy look nothing alike though there is a resemblance to Marian.

From this point on the movie (intentionally) becomes a hammy family sitcom, as the three exchange quips -- "Honey," "Daddy-O," "Junior" -- while fighting the rooskies and, in Mutt's case, literally swinging with the monkeys.

Ford's Indy has definitely mellowed at this point. He's not as excitable or egotistic. I enjoyed the part where they get caught in quicksand and Indy begins patiently explaining the difference between quicksand and a dry sandpit, emphasizing the difference in viscosity.

He's more pedantic professor than grim grave-robber these days.

Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is soon after meeting Mutt, when Indy tosses a line about having known "a lot of Marys" in his lifetime, and the young man leaps from the table, ready to fight a perceived insult of his mother. The Indiana Jones from "Raiders" or "Temple of Doom" would've quickly taken up the challenge, warranted or no.

Instead, he holds his place, looking directly but softly into the younger man's eyes. "You don't have to get sore all the time to prove how tough you are. Sit down. Please, sit down."

Pat Roach, the hulking wrestler who was Indy's punch-pal in the first three movies, had died in 2004 so Igor Jijikine was recruited to play the muscleman antagonist in this movie. He and Indy actually exchange a few good hits before the Russian is eaten alive by giant Amazonian ants. The CGI in this scene was attacked as hoky, but I think it still looks pretty good and certainly was fine compared to contemporary films.

With regard to the two biggest knocks against KotCS:

Yes, the "nuke the fridge" bit is ridiculous. Even if the blast didn't kill him the impact from traveling a few miles like being shot from a cannon would've. But plausibility has not been a hallmark of Indiana Jones movies.

I mean, in "Temple of Doom" an evil shaman reached into a dude's chest and pulled his heart out. Or take the scene where they're flying along in a mine cart, jump across a huge chasm and land exactly on the skinny rail lines on the opposite side.

Gimme the algorithms on that actually happening, perfesser.

On the space aliens revelation, I'm actually 100% fine with that. The film is set in the late 1950s, and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas explicitly said at the outset they wanted to do a science fiction  Indiana Jones flick. I mean, we see the incredibly elongated skull about halfway through the movie -- did you think thiswas going to end anywhere other than (not so) little spacemen?

Again, the first movies involved 1) the Lost Ark of the Covenant, 2) Evil demon magic, and 3) the actual frickin' Holy Grail. To those who loudly pshawed at lead fridges and aliens, I pshaw right back.

I'm genuinely curious what the forthcoming -- and, I've got to think, last -- Indiana Jones movie will hold. I can't imagine they'll try to present Indy as still being capable of even the scaled-down feats of KotCS. We've already heard Mutt won't be back, so is Indy going to recruit another stand-in for the boldest stunts?

They're also not going to kill him off, not without upsetting the established canon that has Indy living until at least the 1990s. There was a lot of talk a few years back about rebooting the franchise with Chris Pratt or someone else starring. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and perhaps even provided the final push needed for a fifth one starring Ford to get made.

Ford has joked about wanting to kill off all of his iconic characters, and he finally succeeded with two of them, Han Solo and Rick Deckard, just within the past few years. Curiously, he has never expressed similar thoughts about Indiana Jones, and in fact has been quite vocal about wanting to bring him back.

Indy's already older than his dad, so to speak, and is even senior to the eldest version of the character ever depicted. Whither Dr. Jones? Only time can tell, and how much can truly be left?

Review: "The Call of the Wild"

No, the CGI dog isn’t that great. Is it terrible? It certainly didn’t play well in the trailers for “The Call of the Wild.” And people have enjoyed dunking on the movie for the weird dynamic of using a human actor in green spandex to act out the part of a giant canine, which animators then digitally painted over.

But you know what? It actually doesn’t matter that much. The CGI may be a bit jarring at first next to a bunch of humans, but by 10 minutes in it didn’t bother me anymore. It’s probably not much worse than the critters in “The Lion King” from last year, the difference being there were no humans to foul up the juxtaposition.

I went into “The Call of the Wild” not expecting much. Honestly, I only went because my boys saw the trailer during “Sonic the Hedgehog” and insisted they wanted to see it. Pick them up from school, a little Chick fil-A, a boys’ night out and momma gets some well-earned solo time.

So I was surprised to find myself increasingly engaged in the story of Buck, the spoiled dog who is shipped off to Alaska for a life of adventure and peril in Jack London’s iconic novel. By the time he’s dog-napped from a comfortable existence as the pet of a wealthy judge and winds up part of a dog sled team, the animation issue had already slid away.

As good as the first half is, the second is pretty spectacular. Harrison Ford only shows up a couple of times during the early going, and in fact at first I was worried he was only going to be a bit player.
But his character, John Thornton, and Buck reunite around the 40-minute mark and the rest of the way it’s all about their relationship.

This is truly one of Ford’s most sensitive and soulful performances. I know that may sound strange for a dog movie, but it is so. There’s no steely hint of the action hero he was for so many decades, or the rapscallion charm of Indy or Han. It’s a truly vulnerable performance you can’t get out of a younger actor.

His John Thornton is a man steeped in regret, who has come to Alaska to make one last attempt at finding meaning in a life that has fallen into shambles. His son, who always dreamed of going on an adventure in the hinterlands, passed away and it eventually doomed his marriage. He spends his days in a tent on a hill outside town, drinking and stewing.

It is not an exaggeration to say that John probably wouldn’t have lived much longer without meeting Buck.

They leave the prospecting village, where Buck had been part of the mail delivery team, and go off for that adventure. It’s not too difficult to see that John is substituting the dog for the son he lost. But it gives him purpose and drive again.

As you may remember from childhood readings, Buck falls in with a pack of timber wolves, and spends more and more of his time away from John. The man is old and wise enough not to resent this, seeing it less as a fraying of bonds as the natural evolution of a pup who must eventually leave one family and start one of his own.

The movie, directed by Chris Sanders (“Lilo & Stitch”) from a screenplay by Michael Green, follows the first part of the novel fairly well but departs in significant ways in the second. There are no other prospector partners for John, no attacks and reprisals on savage Indians (with not-terribly-concealed racial animus).

The search for gold is wholly dispensed with as a worthy endeavor; John and Buck travel to the edge of the world and find the mythical “lost cabin” that supposedly marks the way to a fortune of gold, and in fact they quickly find large nuggets of the stuff in the nearby river. But John uses it as pieces on a chess board or stuffs it into his pockets like lost buttons.

Dan Stevens plays Hal, the villain of the piece who does covet gold for its own end. If there’s a quibble to be had with the movie, it’s the sneering cartoonishness of this character, as he’s written and played. John and Buck encounter him early in the story, and Hal forms a hatred for them that seems far out of proportion to any offense they gave.

They may as well have named him Snidely and given him extravagant mustachios to twirl.

But, like the animation that brings Buck to life, this weakness quickly recedes in importance. The heart and soul of this movie is the bond between man and dog, and how two who are lost find a semblance of home in each other’s companionship.

There’s a wonderful stillness to this movie that we don’t see much at the cinema anymore. I reveled in scenes of Buck and John just encountering a beautiful vista, and simply stopping for a moment to take it all in. At 100 minutes, this is the rare movie that neither tarries nor feels like it’s in too much of a hurry.

I went to “The Call of the Wild” to kill time, and came away genuinely moved, and rejuvenated.

Video review: "The Secret LIfe of Pets 2"

Movies like “The Secret Life of Pets 2” are a perfect fit with home video, because they’re the sort of thing that kids will love and parents can use to buy themselves 86 minutes of precious free time.

I didn’t much care for either the first CGI animation film or this sequel, which basically takes the “Toy Story” concept and applies it to doggies, cats and a few other pet varieties. It’s a look at the adventures they have while we leave them at home.

Max, the Jack Russell Terrier voiced by Patton Oswalt, is more or less the protagonist, though Kevin Hart puts in a challenge as Snowball, an excitable rabbit who dresses like a superhero and starts to imagine he is one, too. Each goes off on their own adventure through the big city, with a third story thread headlined by Gidget, the snooty Pomeranian voiced by Jenny Slater.

I won’t belabor you with a plot summary, other than to say there’s a lot of chases, slightly scary encounters with some tough circus animals and more than a little gastrointestinal humor.

It’s middle-of-the-road moviemaking expressly aimed at kids.

I’m not advocating for skipping movies at the theater, which would render my endeavor rather moot, or with letting your television act as a 24/7 babysitter. What I am saying is that you should spend quality time with your kids, while acknowledging there will be times you need a break from them and a grandparent isn’t around.

Bonus features are quite good, and get better the higher up the price scale you go. The DVD edition includes two short films and accompanying making-of featurette; four deleted scenes; character “pods” highlighting each of the critters; a making-of documentary short; a puppy training school trip with Kevin Hart; tutorials on drawing and making a flip book; and a pets-themed “Yule Log” for the holidays.

Upgrade to the 4K/Blu-ray version and you add “The Further Adventures of Captain Snowball,” a motion comic highlighting the further adventures of the ersatz hero. Digital access-only content amounts to four more documentary shorts.

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Review: "The Secret Life of Pets 2"

"The Secret Life of Pets 2" is not made for me, or thee -- unless one of us is under the age of 10. In which case, I'll endeavor to keep the cursing in this review to a bare minimum.

Like the original film from three years ago, "Pets" is specifically and intentionally made for little kids to enjoy, and for parents to endure. During the screening whenever I started sighing or feeling my thoughts start to wander, I just looked over at my two boys, smiling and laughing their heads off.

Eighty-six minutes of intensely cute and predictable storytelling is not too much to endure for your children.

If anything, I like the sequel a little more than the first one. It splits up the action into three separate storylines, so just when one is getting a little tiresome it switches things up.

The main role of Max, voiced by Louis C.K., is taken over by Patton Oswalt (for #MeToo reasons). He's an excitable Jack Russell Terrier who's resistant to change. Duke, the big shaggy doofus voiced by Eric Stonestreet whose introduction into Max's household formed the basis of the first film's story, gets relegated to the backburner here.

A few years have passed and their woman has married and produced a baby, Liam, to whom the dogs are very attached. When the New York City family goes off for a vacation in the country at an uncle's farm, it sets all sorts of activities in motion.

Gidget, the cultured Pomeranian (voice of Jenny Slate) who pines for Max, is put in charge of his favorite toy, Busy Bee, but quickly loses it into the intimidating lair of the old lady downstairs who has a literal regiment of scary cats. To infiltrate this den of hiss, Gidget must disguise herself as a feline and learn the ways of the cat from her too-cool neighbor, Chloe (Lake Bell).

Meanwhile, uppity rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart), who's really committed to playing super-hero dress-up with his girl, goes on his own mission. Befriending a Shih Tzu named Daisy (Tiffany Haddish), they rescue an albino tiger from a nasty circus owner (Nick Kroll). Then, of course, they've got to find somewhere to stash it.

Out on the farm, Duke and Max are impressed with the farm dog, Rooster, voiced with delicious gruffness by Harrison Ford. He's everything they are not: self-reliant, authoritative and master of other critters.

Rather than a typical movie dynamic, where Rooster resents the urban invaders and then gradually warms up to them, the country dog is more or less benevolent from the start. He's clearly annoyed by their lack of skill in essential dogginess, like herding sheep and howling at the moon. But Rooster sees Max not as a city slicker to be dismissed so much as a youngster in need of tutoring.

It's about as close to a blue state/red state bonding as we're apt to see in the movies these days.

Director Chris Renaud and Brian Lynch continue to ride their "Minions" formula: slapstick mixed with fart jokes and doe eyes. It's unsophisticated filmmaking for a kiddie audience, nothing more and nothing less.

You can bemoan that this type of movie exists, or pony up to the ticket booth and make your young'uns happy.

Video review: "Blade Runner 2049"

“Blade Runner 2049” was my favorite film of 2014, mostly because “Blade Runner” is one of my most cherished movies ever, and I did not expect any sequel to do it justice. So I was gobsmacked to encounter a film that is a completely seamless revisit to the dystopian future envisioned by author Philip K. Dick, now 30 years further down a dark road.

Two things usually doom sequels: being too bold, or not bold enough. Most go the latter way, simply trying to reboot all the elements that made the first movie a success, without really moving the ball downfield from a storytelling example. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is a good recent example, as it’s basically a remake of “A New Hope.”

When other filmmakers take over a franchise, they often want to put their own stamp on it, coming up with crazy concoctions that don’t mesh with the original material. This was the danger with “Blade Runner 2049,” with Denis Villeneuve taking over the director’s chair from Ridley Scott.

And yet the new movie looks, feels and sounds very much like the child of “Blade Runner.” Once again, it’s set in a world where bioengineered “replicants” serve as the virtual slaves of an uncaring human populous. Ryan Gosling plays K, a replicant Los Angeles police detective who’s really little more than a paid assassin of other “skin jobs” like himself who have wandered off the plantation.

He uncovers a plot that takes him right up to the very top of the corridors of power, where mega-tycoon Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) wants to launch the replicant trade to off-world markets. His very able assistant, Luv (an arresting Sylvia Hoeks), is put onto the case.

Harrison Ford returns as Deckard, the iconic blade runner from the first film, whom K encounters about halfway through in a clash of generations that’s every bit as electric as we’d hoped.

Ana de Armas plays Joi, K’s holographic “wife.” Manufactured by Niander’s omnipresent corporation, we suspect that Joi is merely another construct designed to keep the replicant workforce docile. But their love seems very real, indeed.

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins – his long-delayed Academy Award seems finally assured – “Blade Runner 2049” is a beautiful, disturbing look into a future that at times seems all too plausible.

Video bonus features are quite expansive, with a decent amount of goodies on the DVD version and even more for the Blu-ray combo pack.

The DVD includes six making-of mini-documentaries that combine together to form “Blade Runner 101.” These include “Blade Runners,” “The Replicant Evolution,” “The Rise of Wallace Corp,” “Welcome to 2049,” “Joi” and “Within the Skies.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you add another special feature, “Designing the World of Blade Runner 2049.”

Most intriguing are three prologue pieces that explore the world between 2019, when the original “Blade Runner” was set, and the new one we see. They are “2022: Black Out,” “2036: Nexus Dawn” and “2048: Nowhere to Run.”

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Review: "Blade Runner 2049"

The truth: I didn’t really want a “Blade Runner” sequel.

Just as I did not want to see a live-action version of “The Lord of the Rings,” or a reboot of the “Mad Max” franchises. And yet I love those movies now, offshoots of things I cherished as a youngster -- edging to the point of favoring the new over the old, if my middle-aged self was unflinchingly honest with my teen me.

So: “Blade Runner 2049” is the finest film I’ve seen this 2017.

It’s brilliant, disturbing, sad, beautiful, tragic and filled with tempered joy. It continues the journey of a dystopian, not-so-distant future of bioengineered humans made to be servants of genuine ones, and how each struggles at the shackles that bind them together.

This is the rare sequel that is an extension which is both logically and emotionally sound. Having watched it, I can’t imagine it beginning, or ending, another way.

The film manages to introduce us to a new hunter of replicants, played by Ryan Gosling, while reuniting us with Deckard, as Harrison Ford reprises one of his most indelible roles. “I had your job once… I was good at it,” Deckard taunts upon their first meeting. It’s a titanic clash of generations, quite literally.

My suspicion arose chiefly because the sequel, which is set 30 years later than the original and arrives 35 years after, is not directed by Ridley Scott, who’s still around and quite busy at nearly age 80. Yet Denis Villeneuve (“Prisoners”) has perfectly captured the qualities that made the 1982 film so vivid and groundbreaking -- the sense of alienation, the way life is devalued simply because of its origin, the invasion of commerce into every corner of our lives.

Things are helped immensely by the return of original script man Hampton Fancher, joined by Michael Green, working from the novel by Philip K. Dick. (Though ever more loosely, it must be said.)

In this version, there is no question about the nature of Gosling’s blade runner: he is a replicant who hunts his own kind. Known by his serial number, KD6-3.7, or simply “K,” he moves freely among normal humans with a gun, an LAPD badge and all the powers that come with those tokens. Though he is (almost literally) spat upon by other police officers.

While on a routine “retirement” of an old-model replicant (Dave Bautista), K makes a discovery that sets off a world of strife. The old Tyrell corporation that created the first replicants, aka “skin jobs,” is long defunct. But Niander Wallace, a power-mad blind oracle played by Jared Leto, has crafted new replicants more pliable and palatable, which makes his otherworldly ambitions possible.

K’s boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright), whom he addresses as “madam,” wants K to cover the whole thing up. But Niander’s right-hand replicant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), is ordered to follow the follower. She possesses an arresting combination of contempt and empathy for the humans who created people like her.

K has a quiet, constrained life, complete with a hologram wife to keep him from wanting more than the routine of ceaseless murder. Joi (Ana de Armas) is fully emotionally connected to him, even though she’s another product of Wallace’s omnipresent corporation. K uses his bonus for successful retirements to buy Joi an “emanator,” which allows her to leave their apartment and have some semblance of corporeal existence.

Slaves of slaves -- so where do the boundaries of servitude begin and end? These are the sorts of vexing thoughts the film raises for us.

Appropriately, this is one of the most hauntingly beautiful films ever made. Cinematography legend Roger Deakins gives us slants of organic light contrasted with inky pools of darkness, vivid colors, blasted landscapes and tactile displays of proffered flesh. Nominated 13 times for an Oscar without winning, Deakins may finally get his due.

At nearly three hours long, “Blade Runner 2049” is not an endless parade of action. People who have not seen the original movie in a while may be surprised in revisiting it how deliberate and contemplative the film is. Likewise, its cinematic inheritor blends moments of gripping violence with languid stretches where the characters just look, and are looked upon, think and react.

Rather than slowing things down, these sequences give the movie its rightful sense of weight and purpose. Here is the uninvited sequel, now indispensable.

Video review: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

For the record, I’ve adored all the Star Wars movies -- even the much-maligned “prequel” trilogy. So when I say that I liked Episode VII, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” about as much as I did “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” is not the intended insult most people think.

I would put both near the bottom of any ranking of the franchise. Which is to say I think they’re still very good science fiction/fantasy films. But their flaws are more glaring than the others. I won’t belabor those of “Phantom Menace,” as they’re well-known -- kooky trade war plot, Jar Jar buffoonery, etc.

The biggest problem with “TFA” is that it’s not terribly original. It’s essentially a reboot of the first film: a nobody on a desert planet rises to glory through the mystical Force; bad guy in a black mask; cantina of bizarre aliens; roguish smuggler Han Solo sets aside cynicism to join the rebels; world-destroying space station threatens the galaxy; plans for its destruction are embedded in a perky little robot.

Director J.J. Abrams, who co-wrote the script with Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt, seemed more intent on making a greatest hits compilation for the fans than a logical and satisfying extension of the Star Wars saga.

Like: how is it that 30 years after its defeat, the Empire has reconstituted itself into the First Order, complete with Stormtrooper armies and a new Death Star (er, Starkiller Base). What were Leia (Carrie Fisher) and the Galactic Senate doing all this time?

The setup is that Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) was training a new generation of Jedi Knights when he was betrayed by his chief pupil, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who was seduced to the dark side despite his good parentage. (Which I’ll not reveal here, for the 0.2% of readers who didn’t see the movie in theaters and are still innocent of the Internet.)

The plans for Starkiller Base come into the possession of Rey (Daisy Ridley), a mysterious scavenger living the quiet life on barren Jakku, and Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who betrayed his dark conditioning. They meet up with Han Solo (Harrison Ford), searching for his long-lost ship the Millennium Falcon, as everyone scrambles to get the plans before First Order wipes out the resistance.

It’s a delightful space adventure, with plenty of dogfights, scary critters and lightsaber duels. Kylo Ren is a new iteration of villain – self-aware, unbalanced, petulant. Rey remains an enigma, including to herself, but there are hints of great destiny ahead. The weakest character is Finn, who transforms overnight from emotionless soldier to hootin’ rebel cheerleader without even the barest of emotional journeys. (Boyega’s often over-the-top performance doesn’t help, either.)

But it’s easy to overlook the failings in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” because they don’t detract from the immediacy of the thrills. I’m just hoping future films in the series will harbor a little more ambition.

Bonus features are pretty good, mostly represented in seven featurettes that touch on special effects, John Williams’ musical score, building BB-8, etc. There’s also a lengthy making-of documentary, “Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey,” plus several deleted scenes.

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Video review: "The Age of Adaline"

A bit of romantic trifle with a science fiction twist, “The Age of Adaline” is most hurt by its main star, and most helped by a late-arriving supporting player.

Blake Lively isn’t given enough to do by the script, which posits her as a San Francisco woman whose strange, electrified car crash in 1929 prevents her from aging any more. She wanders through time, trading identities every decade or so to prevent suspicion, her only permanent connection being her daughter, who today has become an old lady played by Ellen Burstyn.

Still, Lively’s performance is drab and emotionally unaffecting. She becomes a Zelig-like figure, someone who shows up everywhere but leaves little trace of their passing.

Adaline has been careful to avoid romantic entanglements for obvious reasons, but now a new beau (Michiel Huisman) has wandered into her life and knocked over some emotional furniture. Soon they’re an item and making long-term plans together – longer, perhaps, than he knows.

It’s a pretty straightforward story, with some flat, dry narration to make things even duller than they might already be.

Then Harrison Ford turns up about halfway through the movie as Adaline’s boyfriend’s dad, and suddenly the movie takes off. Ford, not exactly known as an overly emotive actor, shows us all kinds of vulnerability and doubt that we don’t usually see from cinema’s most reliable heroic everyman.

I won’t give away the details of what transpires, other than to say some old painful memories are dredged up.

Despite the slow start and the underwhelming protagonist, “The Age of Adaline” eventually finds its footing.

Director Lee Toland Krieger provides a feature-length commentary for the special features, which are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray editions. There are also deleted scenes and three featurettes: “A Love Story for the Ages,” “Style Throughout the Ages” and “Discovering Young Harrison Ford: Anthony Ingruber, An Online Sensation.”

Note: Ingruber gained notoriety for his YouTube impressions of Ford and other famous actors, which eventually led to this gig. He is indeed eerily reminiscent of a 1970s Harrison Ford.

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Reeling Backward: "Presumed Innocent" (1990)

One of my favorite things to do in this space is consider movies I saw contemporaneously and assess how they've aged. Some films are universally lauded or dismissed when they first come out. But a great many more need the remove of 20 years-plus to see how they stack up.

Which is not to say Father Time is always fair.

For my money, "Presumed Innocent" is one of the best crime dramas of its era. It features a Harrison Ford performance that ranks among his top two or three. It's got a magnificent supporting cast, led by Raul Julia in perhaps his most affecting screen role. And it was a capstone on the career of writer/director Alan J. Pakula, whose work included "All the President's Men" and "Sophie's Choice."

And yet "Presumed Innocent" has faded nearly to the vanishing point in the public consciousness. It hardly ever gets talked about these days, and it failed to receive a single Academy Award nomination -- in a year in which "The Godfather Part III" and "Dick Tracy" got seven nods apiece.

It's not available on any of the major streaming services, and the only DVD I could find was a shitty transfer that was not even enhanced for widescreen televisions -- meaning the image only occupied the center portion of the screen.

Still, I found it just as enthralling as I did 25 years ago.

It was based on a best-selling novel, the first by Scott Turow, a lawyer-turned-novelist whose books put John Grisham's to shame in terms of storytelling and prose. Producer Sydney Pollack bought the rights for a million bucks before it was even published. Add in Pakula's name and the cast they assembled, and the film had "prestige project" written all over it.

Narratively, it's pretty straightforward. Rusty Sabich (Ford) is a career prosecutor investigating the murder of a female colleague, who finds himself caught up in poisonous political intrigue and accused of the crime himself. The first half is taken up with the inquiry -- and the circle of buzzards slowly gathering over Rusty's head -- while the second half more or less all happens in the courtroom.

In the book, Turow undertakes the considerable challenge of a first-person narrative in which the guilt of the main character is left open to question until the final pages. Turow burrows very deep into his main characters' psyches, revealing complex thoughts and emotional patterns you don't usually see in popular fiction.

The film adaptation -- Pakula wrote the screenplay with Frank Pierson ("Dog Day Afternoon") -- doubles down on this storytelling device, leaving it until the final scene before heavily implicating Rusty as the murderer, before revealing it was his jealous wife who did the deed.

(Sorry, the sell-by date on spoilers expires somewhere well south of a quarter-century.)

In 1990 Harrison Ford was very much a heroic leading man, edging up to 50 -- an age at which many of Hollywood's more ambitious stars have felt the urge to explore morally ambiguous material. The best example is James Stewart, capped by his portrayal of a sexually obsessed policeman in "Vertigo."

I think Pakula was making a very conscious decision to leverage the fundamental decency of Ford's star persona -- using it to make the audience root for Rusty, even as all the evidence points to his guilt. The fact that Rusty previously had an affair with the victim, Caroline Polhemus (a terrific Greta Scacchi), and his wife, Barbara, is endearingly played by Bonnie Bedelia, further stack the deck in making it hard for audience to convict or acquit him in their own minds.

If they'd tried this with another actor with a retinue of villainous roles in his past -- say, Jeremy Irons, to pull a name out of a hat -- I don't think the picture would've worked nearly as well. The main dynamic Pakula has going in is making the audience wonder if Rusty is a victim or a victimizer.

Ford gives a masterful performance, playing weak and angry with the same aplomb he did dashing and valiant. Though his part is largely reactive in the second half -- graciously ceding the spotlight to Julia, who plays his attorney -- you can always see the animation going on behind Rusty's face. His Roman-style haircut, so popular at that time, lends him a touch of the martial.

"You always kept the cork in too tight," is how a (supposed) friend describes him.

Having reread the book again recently, I was struck by how closely the film follows its plot. Still, there are a number of notable divergences.

The movie shows some things not depicted in the book, such as Caroline's funeral, while eliminating tertiary characters and story threads, such as her son, a disaffected college student who barely knew her. Pakula & Co. pump up the sex considerably -- including a steamy romp in the office that never happens in the novel -- while also adding scenes with Rusty's son, Nat (Jesse Bradford), to humanize him as a devoted father.

The character of Barbara is probably the biggest alteration, transformed from a shrewish harpy into a deeply depressed housewife who still clings needily to the shredded fabric of her marriage. Asked by Rusty how she would testify if put on the witness stand, she practically pleads: "I'd say you're the only man I ever loved... and still do."

An important flashback involves the case of Wendell, a 5-year-old boy tortured by his mother by putting his head in a vise. It's discussed in the book but vividly depicted in the movie. It's vital because this is the event that brings Rusty and Caroline together, first as co-counsel and then as lovers. Joseph Mazzello -- best remembered as half of the terrified siblings in "Jurassic Park," aka the kid who gets zapped on the electrical fence -- is pitch perfect as the terrified little boy.

John Williams' restrained musical score, highlighted by a trill of single piano notes, adds greatly to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the proceedings. Ditto for the stark cinematography by the great Gordon Willis, notable for its noir-ish use of sharp, almost harsh layers of contrast.

Julia, as attorney Alejandro "Sandy" Stern, makes the most of a magnificently constructed character. Turow is very specific and detailed in his descriptions of him, touted as the best defense attorney in Kindle County, the fictional setting for all of his novels (roughly akin to Philadelphia, in my reckoning). Stern has courtly manners, but a razor-sharp mind and an instinct for intimidating his opponents.

Pakula and Pierson play up the Stern character even more, letting him reveal bits of information contained elsewhere in the book, that elevate him almost to Jedi-like status. Indeed, Turow focused his next novel, "The Burden of Proof," entirely on Stern. (It was turned into a television mini-series, alas, starring another actor.)

The rest of the supporting cast is, simply, superlative. Paul Winfield is magisterial and funny as the judge, Larren L. Lytle. Unlike other courtroom dramas where the lawyers are allowed to holler and fume, Lytle keeps a tight control on the proceedings. And he is revealed to have his own dark past that affects his current case.

John Spencer, who's best known for playing authority figures, is solid and authentic as the pimpish Lipranzer, Rusty's right-hand man on the police force. Joe Grifasi, who like Julia is not introduced until about halfway through the movie, summons the fervent zealotry of Tommy Molto, the prosecutor heading up the case and Rusty's chief interlocutor.

Tom Mardirosian nails the facile, shallow charm of Nico Della Guardia, the upstart rival for Prosecuting Attorney who ends up defeating Rusty's boss, Raymond Horgan, in the impending election due in no small part to his chief deputy being accused of murder. It is a testament to the cleverness of the book and movie that the election, which hangs like a shroud over the film's first half, is disposed with off-screen after Rusty is charged.

Brian Dennehy brings a brash confidence to Horgan, a true believer who's been swallowed by 12 years in politics. "In the end, all you can do is try to hang on to the fuckin' job," he laments, anticipating the wake of his public career. Horgan is a classic Irish-American back-slapping politico, who always knows on which his side is bread is buttered.

A young Bradley Whitford has a small, key part as Stern's chief assistant, Jamie Kemp. (In Turow's creation, he's a former rock star-turned-apprentice lawyer -- who's begging for his own novel treatment.) And Sab Shimono is terrific as "Painless" Kumagai, the buffoon of a coroner who is firmly in Della Guardia's pocket.

"Presumed Innocent" ends its morality tale with Rusty Sabich a free man, yet imprisoned by the fate imposed on him by his own choices. Though he did not commit the murder, he committed the sins that led up to it, as revealed in Ford's emotionally roiling final narration:

"I am a prosecutor. I have spent my life in the assignment of blame. With all deliberation and intent, I reached for Caroline. I cannot pretend it was an accident. I reached for Caroline, and set off that insane mix of rage and lunacy that led one human being to kill another. There was a crime. There was a victim. And there is punishment."

And so why has this wonderful film been judged with the ultimate punishment that can be inflicted on a work of cinema -- being forgotten?

Perhaps it is something akin to our criminal justice system, which purports to favor letting 100 guilty men be acquitted rathern than convicting one innocent -- yet we know it still happens. Some forgettable films endure, while worthy ones languish in the prison of our failing memories. They just need a crusader to help bring them back it into the light.

Review: "The Age of Adaline"

"The Age of Adaline" is a movie with a little going for it.

It wants to be a lush romantic tale with a science fiction twist -- beautiful young woman suffers a strange accident and remains young and beautiful forever. Like Dorian Gray and Orlando, Adaline Bowman wanders the decades, eschewing love but eventually drawn into entanglements that inevitably end with pain.

Emotionally, though, it's a remarkably staid film, with neither lead actress Blake Lively or the story providing much in the way to cause our hearts to go pitter-patter.

Until, that is, Harrison Ford shows up in the second half and almost rescues the picture with his raw, naked vulnerability.

Which, I'm aware, is a strange thing to say. Whatever else you think of Ford's thespian skills -- I happen to believe he's been gravely underestimated over his four decades of acting -- he's never been known as a particularly emotive performer. Gruff, hard everymen who occasionally let their veneer slip is more his line.

So to see him stripped bare, stammering with eyes that seem just on the edge of tears, is quite a thing to experience.

The rest of the film picks up on his tragic energy, and concludes with a great deal more emotional momentum, even if the plot is a bit predictable. It's like the movie suddenly remembers to get out of its own way.

Lively plays Adaline, born to a wealthy San Francisco family in 1908. She led a pretty normal life, we're told -- the strangely flat, precise narration is a pure bust -- until the age of 29. During a rare California snowstorm, her car crashed into an icy river, where she went into hypothermia and was then revived by an electrical current from lightning.

All this caused her DNA to undergo "electron compression" and ... actually, don't bother trying to figure out the science-y gobbledy gook; it all just means that she stopped aging. She soldiered on with her life, raising her daughter, until it became clear that she could no longer fool others with talk of miracle Parisian face creams to explain her unaging appearance.

Adaline went on the lam, taking up a new identity and existence every 10 years. And never let her guard down, we learn, except once.

Flash to 2015. Adaline, now going by the name Jenny, celebrates her 107th birthday with her daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn), who is now quite elderly, and her only confidante. She's preparing to spend her next decade on a farm in Oregon, until she runs into an effusive man named Ellis, played by Dutch actor Michiel Huisman, who pronounces his name as "Alice."

He isn't a particularly interesting or engaging character. He's that tiresome cinematic canard, the charming guy who got fabulously rich at a young age but doesn't make a big deal out of it because, y'know, it's just money.

(Axiom: the only people who say they don't care about money are those who already have gobs and gobs of it.)

Ellis/Alice woos Adaline/Jenny with a fierce urgency bordering on creepiness. She eventually succumbs, of course, because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. They go on a trip to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his parents, played by Ford and Kathy Baker ... and there I'll have to stop, to prevent giving away too much.

It may seem an odd comparison, but this movie reminded me in some ways of "Funny People." That 2009 Judd Apatow comedy started out very strong, but then about halfway through we stumbled upon a new character and storyline that knocked the whole movie off its rails.

"The Age of Adaline" is the opposite: it wanders the wilderness for nearly an hour, then Harrison Ford rides in like a white knight. Neither film winds up a total success, but it's better to gain vigor than watch it dissipate.

Video review: "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"

The first “Anchorman” movie was spectacularly overrated, and the sequel is a heaping helping of seconds.

Oh, you’ll laugh during “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.” Probably chortle quite uproariously on a half-dozen or so occasions. The rest of the time, though, is waiting around for that next big ROFL moment to arrive. During these portions, which make up the bulk of the overlong 119-minute runtime, the movie barely edges into tolerable.

Will Farrell returns as Ron Burgundy, the worst newscaster in history (circa 1980). As the story opens he loses his job and his marriage simultaneously, but gets a second chance at the then-new enterprise of television news broadcast 24/7.

Relegated to the wee hours of the morning, he and his crew of nitwits (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) soon make a splash by giving the audience exactly what they want – car chases, cute critters and jingoistic patriotism.

As a critique of TV news, “Anchorman 2” is pretty weak tea, hitting all the obvious notes without much originality or flair. So the movie has to rely on its characters and humor, which are the very definition of scattershot.

Director Adam McKay, who co-write the script with Ferrell, favor an ad-lib approach in which actors do take after take, and (supposedly) the best stuff is used for the movie. Ferrell & Co. stand there, barking out absurd dialogue until something sticks.

Their comedy mantra seems to be “Try, try again.” But is one hit to every 20 misses worth your time?
This zany M.O. does, however, allow them to try something truly audacious for the video release. They are giving us three different versions of the film, including a “Super-Sized R-Rated Version” that reportedly includes 763 new jokes.

It’s essentially an alternative edit of the theatrical version (also included), with different lines swapped out. It also includes an unrated version with even filthier gags and language.

Is the “new” version of the movie better than the one we saw in theaters? You’ll have to decide for yourself.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also includes a making-of doc, gag reel, table read by the cast, deleted and extended scenes, audition tapes and more.

You have to spring for the Blu-ray pack to get all these goodies, though; the solo DVD contains only the theatrical version of the movie, and that’s it.

Movie: C
Extras: B-plus

Review: "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"

I admit I never got what the big deal was about "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." The 2004 comedy was a modest commercial hit that somehow went on to gain near-iconic status as a comedic masterpiece. Word of a long-delayed sequel set off a flurry of rapturous attention, followed up by a marketing campaign so omnipresent that folks living in the Himalayas must be thinking Will Ferrell & Co. are becoming a tad overexposed.

The first film had a few uproarious laughs interrupted by long dull spaces in between, and the sequel is much the same.

I will further admit that I laughed three or four times during "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" as hard as anything I've seen this year. But it's a hard slog in between those wonderful moments, particularly in the dull-as-toast second half.

Are a handful of truly great comedic moments enough to make a movie worth a dollar bill with Andy Jackson's face on it, plus two hours of your time? I vote no, and I got to see it for free.

If you're a novice to the world of Burgundy: he's the world's worst newscaster, a dim-bulb egomaniac played by Ferrell with trademark obliviousness. Ron's the sort of guy who can be offending everyone in the room and not even be aware of it.

His look is pure late 1970s: neon-hued suits with ties as wide as a Buick, cheesy mustache, sideburns and a hairdo that's over-primped into ridiculousness.

As the story opens, Ron gets dumped by his San Diego network and his wife (Christina Applegate) in one fell swoop, and ends up as an announcer at the local Sea World. His drunken binges doom even that job, until a new gig lands in his lap with a crazy idea: news 24/7.

Of course, their Global News Network is a barely-concealed spoof on the early days of CNN and the fracturing of the news audience into a thousand little pieces.

Burgundy assembles his old crew and heads to New York, only to find he's relegated to the 2-5 a.m. slot, while slimy top dog Jack Lime (James Marsden) gets the primetime slot and becomes Burgundy's chief tormentor.

They respond by giving people what they want -- cute animals, car chases, jingoistic patriotism and other pap. The audience eats it up, vaulting Burgundy into the stratosphere.

The M.O. of Ferrell and Adam McKay, his director and co-screenwriter, is pretty familiar by now. The characters stand there and spout ridiculously off-the-wall nonsense in the hopes that some of it will be click with the audience.

And some of it does. Steve Carell puts the most points on the board as Brick, the innocent naïf weathercaster. As played by Carell, Brick has the social skills of an infant who was suddenly zapped into adult form. Because it's married to that sweet, dumb persona, his ramblings are funnier because it comes from a place of utter simplicity.

"A black man follows me everywhere when it's sunny," Brick says.

"I think that's your shadow," Ron offers helpfully.

At one point, the gang attends Brick's funeral, and he shows up to give the eulogy, and has to be convinced that he's still alive. He even gets a love interested in Kristen Wiig, who plays his female intellectual and emotional equivalent.

Other weirdo plot twists include having Ron date his black producer (Meagan Good), just so we can have a scene where he sits down to dinner with her family and spout one racially insensitive malaprop after another.

Things culminate in a massive battle between news teams that's more notable for the incredible number of celebrity cameos -- Will Smith, Kanye West, Jim Carrey and Tina Fey among them -- than for any actual humor generated. It's a fitting end for a movie that seems to have fallen in love with its own hype.

Review: "Ender's Game"

Give Hollywood credit for tackling a science fiction novel that contains few of the easy entry points the genre usually provides for cinematic endeavors. In "Ender's Game" there are no cute robot sidekicks, no cool aliens as allies, not even the lightspeed spaceships, laser weapons and other cool hardware that populate the background of such movies.

Instead, it's a grim and bleak look at a future where humanity is facing extinction at the hands of a hive-like race of creatures known as the Formics. Asa Butterfield plays Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a young boy who is also a brilliant strategist, finding himself being trained to lead Earth's defense against the invaders.

(According to the film's narration, children make for better commanders because their ingenuity is not bogged down by straitlaced adult thinking. It's a storytelling conceit; just swallow it and move on.)

The film, based on the novel by Orson Scott Card, largely plays out as a long game of psychological warfare and simulated combat, with Ender attending the elite off-world Battle School, where he must go up against his fellow child recruits, his gruff and demanding commander, and eventually the aliens himself. He is forced to hone his instincts for warfare while balancing them against his human compassion, exemplified respectively by his psychopath brother and his compassionate sister (Abigail Breslin).

If you think just because the movie stars a cast of mostly kid actors that it's a good fit for young audiences, think again. While the violence is rather tame and there's no swearing, the mental duress placed upon Ender is quite extreme. Audience members under high school age would likely find it dreary.

(Incurious adults, too.)

As a cerebral exercise, though, I found the film challenging and complex, supplying many questions and few easy answers about the morality of waging war. Ender's tactics are genius, but his willingness to sacrifice allies to achieve a win earn him the grudging respect of his teachers and fellow students alike.
(I'm not surprised to learn the book is recommended reading for U.S. Marines officer training.)

As Colonel Graff, Harrison Ford tackles a much darker role than we're used to. Graff sees Ender as his shining star, potentially the savior of humanity, and if that means putting a tender boy through the crucible of harsh lessons, he's more than willing to do it. Viola Davis plays a psychiatrist chartered to nurture Ender's psyche, so naturally she finds herself butting heads with Graff.

Ben Kingsley has a small but vital role as the last of Ender's instructors, a man with a tatooed face and mysterious past. Hailee Steinfeld plays Petra, a fellow cadet who stands up for Ender when he's abused by their team leader.

"Ender's Game" will not suit everyone's tastes. Writer/director Gavin Hood's plotting is sometimes suspect, and the story bogs down a few times. And if you go in expecting a light, action-heavy ripping space yarn, you'll likely walk away disappointed. For me, the moral complexities of the tale were tantalizing and way more ambitious than expected. This is thinking man's sci-fi.