Video review: "Venom"

“Venom” is exactly the sort of fun, forgettable movie Hollywood is in love with these days. It came out without a tremendous amount of hype, aside from diehard comic book fanboys, and proceeded to make a boatload of money.

I just saw it two months ago and I can barely remember it.

Tom Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a hard-charging digital journalist living the dream in San Francisco. Things come crashing down in short order when he takes on a technology tycoon (Riz Ahmed) everyone thinks is nice but secretly is working on some nasty experiments. While busting into the laboratory to prove his case, Eddie gets unwillingly attached to an alien symbiote and becomes Venom.

It’s a symbiotic relationship -- if your partner was a bullying, violent ball of black tar from another planet that wants to bite off everyone’s heads. Eddie’s aware of everything going on when Venom takes over, but can’t really control it.

Powers are fairly similar to Spider-Man’s: super-strength and speed, as well as the ability to create spikes and other shapes out of its pitch-black form. Oh, and he’s got a nasty pair of choppers to make good on all the avowed head-chomping.

The action scenes are a bit muddy, and I didn’t appreciate another Tom Hardy character whose dialogue is hard to understand. He’s a great actor, but mumbling is not an aesthetic.

The Blu-ray comes with some cool bonus features, including several deleted and extended scenes, a making-of documentary, pre-visualization of some of the CGI-heavy sequences, several featurettes and a couple of music videos.

By far the coolest extra is “Venom Mode,” in which you can watch the movie with informative pop-ups throughout the movie that include comparisons with the comics and hidden references.

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Review: "Venom"

"Venom" is pretty goofy and kind of a garbage movie. But it's the sort of thing that's fitfully entertaining, enough so that you tend to forgive the goofiness and garbageness.

Tom Hardy graduates from playing a Batman villain to a Marvel one, although in this telling he falls more into the anti-hero groove. You may remember from "Spider-Man 3" -- unless you've purged the entire thing from memory, which isn't a bad idea -- that Eddie Brock was a rival to Peter Parker's at the Daily Bugle who eventually become infected with the same alien symbiote that lent him his cool new black suit and darker powers.

This presumably takes place in some alternate timeline, where Eddie never became Venom but instead was chased out of the New York media scene for veiled indiscretions. He landed in San Francisco and has done well for himself, operating as a mobile investigative reporter for a local network doing "The Eddie Brock Report." He's got a cool townhouse, a nifty motorcycle and even niftier fiancee (Michelle Williams).

Things come a-tumblin' down when he goes after an Elon Musk-like tech billionaire whose space program brought back the alien creatures, which resemble twitching balls of tarry goo, and is experimenting with bonding them to mammal hosts, soon upgraded to human guinea pigs.

Eddie loses his job, his home, his girl and his reputation. Oddly, although his clothes and hair get scragglier, he never seems to run short on cash, generously handing a $20 bill to a homeless woman. And he's able to keep his bike and park it in a dingy alley without ever having to worry about it being stolen.

The villain is played by Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed, and I thought it was cool that we're at a place culturally and cinematically where we're comfortable with a brown bad guy. Though for some reason the movie grants him the overpoweringly WASP-y name of Carlton Drake.

One of the alien symbiotes attaches itself to Eddie, turning him into a monstrous figure that resembles Spider-Man dipped in boiling pitch, with a nasty sexualized tongue constantly wagging. He gains superhuman strength and agility, and the symbiote can create spikes or other shapes with its tentacle-like appendages.

Hilariously, the creature also speaks to him, using the same rough, growly Batman voice that has become de rigueur for darker comics characters. It can control Eddie's body and actions, though he remains conscious the entire time, even when Venom wants to (and does) chomp on people.

At one point Venom looks at a gang of mercenaries they have just defeated, and suggests he bite off their heads and arrange the pieces, just for the aesthetic pleasure of it. "Pile of bodies, pile of heads!" it demands.

There are some decent action scenes, though the CGI often becomes bewildering and hard to follow. Hardy plays Eddie as another one of his mush-mouth twerp characters, more Ratso Rizzo than Peter Parker.

"Venom" starts out a little scary and eventually turns into a weird buddy cop comedy, except one of them's a voracious alien creature and neither one of them is a cop.

Video review: "Dunkirk"

A very atypical war movie, “Dunkirk” shows us the plight of the Allies during the lowest point of World War II, when hundreds of thousands of British troops were trapped on the shores of France with no way to get home. It’s a story of heroism, rather than individual heroes.

There are characters – the cast includes Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Lowden, Fionn Whitehead, Barry Keoghan, Cillian Murphy, Harry Styles and Mark Rylance – but they exist more as archetypes than specific people. Most of them are not even named, and their dialogue is restricted to the mission at hand.

There are no wistful remembrances of girls back home, or what job you had before the war, such as in “Saving Private Ryan.” Director/writer Christopher Nolan keeps his camera’s eye focused on the immediate peril, the mad dash to survive, and the nobility that ensued.

You might be surprised to find how little fighting there is in the film. Aside from an aerial dogfight and a few volleys of gunfire here and there, the movie’s intensity comes from the fear of death more than the actual depiction of it. Hans Zimmer’s musical score gives us beats and notes without much clear semblance of a melody.

If it sounds like I’m criticizing the film, I’m not. I appreciated how “Dunkirk” took a very different approach to depicting war, focusing more on the you-are-there experience of it rather than the geopolitical forces or personalities.

The film’s true triumph comes in showing us that, nearly 80 years on, there are still new stories to tell about that terrible conflict, and new ways of telling them.

Bonus features are quite extensive, and are the same for the DVD or Blu-ray editions. They consist of 16 making-of featurettes, each focused on a specific part of production. Like the film itself, they are divided into sections of Land, Air and Sea, along with another section dubbed “Creation.”

Collectively they essentially form a feature-length documentary about the making of “Dunkirk,” covering everything from camera work to the air battles and conjuring a flotilla of small private boats.

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Review: "Dunkirk"

There aren’t any characters in Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” at least not really. It’s not a story of individual men so much as a tale of mankind -- his possibilities for mayhem and potential for nobility. This is a war film with very little fighting, an ode to humanity in which no one man stands too far above the rest.

Nolan recreates the mass evacuation of Allied forces at Dunkirk in 1940, the lowest point of World War II when it seemed that the Reich truly was on the verge of toppling the entire world. Hundreds of thousands of troops were trapped on the French coastline, surrounded by Germans, desperately trying to make their way across the Chanel despite too few ships to transport them and not enough planes to protect the ones that did manage to disembark.

The individual story threads are fiction, but together they weave themselves into a thundering representation of the heroism, cowardice and sheer terror of those few days. I have no doubt this film will receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, and many others.

I was surprised when I learned this movie was one hour and 46 minutes long; I thought for certain I had misread it instead of two hours, 46 minutes. But no, “Dunkirk” is the rare war epic that sprawls in scope but not length. There’s an economy to Nolan’s filmmaking here, harkening back to his breakout with “Memento,” like a middleweight fighter who’s all sinew, packing a powerful punch from a modest frame carrying no fat.

The narrative consists of a handful of storylines that intersect when we least expect it, intercutting between them in an order that is not necessarily chronological. At one point we encounter a man, beaten and hollow-eyed, and are surprised to later see him calm and in command. We can guess what happened to him in between, but we don’t know.

This is a true ensemble acting effort, with no lead performers. Fionn Whitehead comes closest to that designation, playing a private who ends up encountering nearly all the other characters in one way or another. He’s a young private who tries to sneak his way to the head of the evacuation line, and keeps finding himself pushed by circumstance further away from salvation. Like many other characters, we never even hear his name.

Kenneth Branagh is the naval officer in charge of the evacuation, standing like a sentinel against the coming apocalypse. Mark Rylance plays Dawson, a Brit civilian who launches his tiny boat, Moonstone, in a seemingly vain effort to help out, his teenage son (Tom Glynn-Carney) and friend (Barry Keoghan) tagging along.

Up in the skies, Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden portray RAF fighter pilots chasing the German planes who are hunting those soldiers who have managed to get off the shore in boats. Their fuel is running lower and lower, but they know that every enemy shot down could mean hundreds of lives saved. So they watch their gauge needles, and stay a little longer.

(Though he’s not credited, I’m fairly certain it’s Michael Caine as the voice of their commander over the radio.)

There are no genuine battles in “Dunkirk,” other than some aerial dogfighting. The Allied soldiers hunker on the beach, hoping for a ship, or if they made it onto one, pray they’re not spotted by German planes or U-boats. There is no illusion of winning here, merely a frantic struggle to survive.

The film is a technical marvel, a seamless combination of live action and CGI effects that convince us we’re right in the thick of it. The metal hulls of the Spitfires pop with the stress of sharp banking; the seas go nearly black with oil spilled from ships stoven in by bombs like playthings.

Hans Zimmer’s musical score is a masterpiece of mood without melody. Reminiscent of the old Vangelis scores from the 1980s, the eclectic combination of tones and rhythm soars or sinks as the prospects for survival wane and wax.

In the middle of a summer of popcorn movies and dimwit comedies, “Dunkirk” rises, grim-faced and commanding, to grab our attention.

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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Video review: "Legend"

“Legend” is a solid gangster picture and a showcase for the versatile Tom Hardy, who played both halves of the infamous Kray sibling duo, who ruled London’s criminal underside in their 1960s heyday.

Written and directed by Brian Helgeland, based on a book by John Pearson, it tries a little too obviously to be the “British ‘Goodfellas’” -- but if that’s the worst thing you can say about a movie, that isn’t too shabby.

The challenge for Hardy is playing two men who outwardly are very similar but personality-wise are quite different. Reggie Kray was smooth, dapper, an ex-boxer and consummate ladies’ man who liked to run swank nightclubs and hobnob with celebrities. Ronnie was a sociopath -- he’d been committed to psychiatric hospital -- belligerent and bisexual. He was devoted to Reggie but resented the way people were drawn to him, so Ronnie repelled others as a way to compensate.

Even the way the twins talk diverges in Hardy’s interpretation. Ronnie sounds as if he has a mouthful of marbles, through which his harsh cockney accent bleats and spits.

(Hardy, while a monumentally gifted actor, seems to have a contemptuous disregard for comprehensibility. You’ll want to watch this one with the subtitles on.)

Emily Browning plays Frances, who gets courted and wed by Reggie, which she soon comes to regret as they are separated by his partying and prison stints. She narrates the film, performing much the same role as the William Holden character in “Sunset Boulevard.”

Also turning up are Paul Bettany as a rival mobster; David Thewlis as the Krays’ right-hand man; Christopher Eccleston as the London Yard detective on the case; Chazz Palminteri as an American mafia figure offering a business relationship, and danger; and Taron Egerton as Ronnie’s volatile boy toy.

It’s a wonderful-looking film, full of mod clothes and cars and tunes. It really does emulate the style of “Goodfellas,” with breezy scenes intermixed with bursts of horrific violence. These movies are not just trying to depict gangsters as interesting figures, but sex them up into iconic anti-heroes.

Extra features including a feature-length commentary track by Helgeland and a making-of documentary, “Creating the Legend.”

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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.

Video review: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Twice in my life I’ve anticipated a movie that I knew I was either going to love or hate, because of a deep personal connection with the source material. The first time was “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” based on my favorite novel. This year it was “Mad Max: Fury Road,” a sorta-sequel to 1985’s “The Road Warrior,” a cherished cinematic touchstone.

Luckily, in both cases my fears were unfounded, the movies magnificent.

“Fury Road” is set in post-apocalyptic Australia, portrayed here as a shriveled, hardpan desolation of greed, death and human suffering. Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is an ex-cop just trying to survive and make sense out of why he wants to.

Captured by the despotic local warlord, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), Max finds himself thrown in with a group of women escaping his clutches, led by the fierce one-armed lieutenant, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). They’ve liberated a giant “war rig” and are steering it toward a fabled “green place” somewhere in the east.

It’s essentially one long chase scene, with Joe’s braying, death-obsessed War Boys nipping at their heels, along with a few other various mongrel clans. It’s an orgy of car crashes and death-defying stunts, carried out with minimal assistance from computer-generated imagery.

The action is just jaw-dropping in its spectacle and intensity.

Along the way, Max and Furiosa learn to trust – or at least tolerate – each other’s presence. And Nicholas Hoult has a surprisingly touching role as Nux, a fading War Boy who finds himself disillusioned by his short life of deity worship for Immortan Joe, a decrepit figure held together by his armor and the cult of personality he’s cultivated over the years.

Brutish and thrilling, “Mad Max: Fury Road” proves you can go home again.

Bonus features, which are the same for DVD and Blu-ray versions, included some deleted scenes and a good spectrum of making-of featurettes. Titles include “Maximum Fury: Filming Fury Road,” “Mad Max: Fury on Four Wheels,” “The Road Warriors: Max and Furiosa,” “The Tools of the Wasteland,” “The Five Wives: So Shiny, So Chrome” and “Fury Road: Crash & Smash.”

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Review: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Some movies distract and entertain you; others leave you bored or strained. A few bedazzle, or puzzle us with their flaws, but many more start to fade the moment you leave the theater. What's truly rare is a cinematic experience that is utterly transporting, that captivates you so completely the guy sitting in the seat next to you could have a heart attack and you might not notice.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" is one such film. People walked out of our screening in a daze; they were winded and tired. It's like finishing a marathon: the first thing you do is catch your breath.

Watching this sequel/reboot to the storied apocalyptic death race series, the first from writer/director George Miller in 30 years, is such an assault on the senses it will leave you battered.

It's essentially one two-hour-long chase, with former cop Max Rockatansky unwillingly caught in the middle. It's an orgy of blood and fire, horsepower and hand-to-hand combat, a nightmare pastiche of humanity's last ride played out on the scorched Australian desert. (Actually, Namibia.)

The screenplay by Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris paints a dense, detailed world that we only get tiny glimpses of at any given time. We experience characters and make up elaborate backstories to go with them. This is the sort of movie you have to see several times to completely rap your brain around.

Max is, of course, played by Tom Hardy, the first time Mel Gibson hasn't occupied the role, having gotten too old and rant-y. Hardy fashions his version of the character closer to the vest, motivated less by rage at a world that has robbed him of everything so much as haunted by those he failed to save.

His Max is mad, but mostly at himself.

When we first see him he's still riding the sun-beaten pan in his iconic black police V-8 Interceptor, searching for gas, food and a moment of respite from roving bands of scavengers. But that lasts just a few minutes, as he is captured by the War Boys of Immortan Joe, a local warlord who controls the flow of water from his mountaintop citadel. Max is turned into a "blood bag," a source of clean blood and organs for Joe's soldiers.

Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also was the main villain in the original "Mad Max." He's a terrifying vision, a Darth Vader-esque figure who's viewed as a god by his stable of chalk-white War Boys, but he's actually a decrepit old man held upright by his armor and breathing mask, which is fashioned into a fearsome death's head grin of fangs.

Joe sends regular runs to nearby Gastown to trade for fuel, heavily armed convoys centered around a war rig piloted by one of his chief lieutenants, called Imperators. Furiosa is one such, a fearsome woman with a prosthetic arm played by Charlize Theron. But Furiosa has betrayed Immortan Joe by stealing his bevy of "wives," actually sex slaves who are used to breed his twisted sons.

Max gets brought along for the pursuit by Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the War Boys, who live very short lives due to their mutations, reliance on rage-inducing drugs and dreams of entering Valhalla with Joe's blessing. Through a series of circumstances, Max throws in with Furiosa and her distressed damsels. They voyage toward a "green place" in the east where they can live free; but as we know from these sorts of tales, apocalypses have few oases.

The car chases and combat scenes are simply breathtaking. Miller attained much of them using old-fashioned stunts and practical effects, augmented by computer generated imagery. We see cars reduced to bits of junks even as they're still hurtling forward, with bodies flying off this way and that. Furiosa proves herself Max's equal -- at least -- in survival skills and sheer badassery.

The film is a technical marvel, with vivid cinematography by John Seale, crisp editing from Margaret Sixel and a thrumming heavy metal musical score by Junkie XL.

I loved how Miller uses imagery and themes from the three previous Mad Max movies and weaves them into a new synthesis that feels organic and evolutionary.

For instance, the War Boys, with their skull-like paint, seem an offshoot of Scrooloose, the odd boy among the lost children from "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." And Max is propped up on the front of a car like the hostages in "The Road Warrior." The vehicles are all bastardized combinations of salvaged pieces, such as Immortan Joe's death machine, which is two 1959 Cadillacs welded on top of each other.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" is the rare remake that matches its predecessors in audacity and originality. This is what movies are made for.

Review: "The Drop"

"The Drop" is an intriguing, atypical movie. It starts out with a lot of disparate characters and story elements, some of them related, much of it not. Over time they gradually float towards each other, each piece locking into place in a way that might not have seemed obvious at first.

The experience of watching it is like stumbling upon a disassembled pocket watch, and then witnessing the little gears and springs drag themselves, with almost gravitational pull, into a cohesive whole again. The actual process of putting itself back together can be a bit tedious at times, but at some point everything clicks together.

This is another film based on the writings of Dennis Lehane, who also penned the screenplay. Movies based on his work have been up ("Gone Baby Gone"), down ("Shutter Island") and vastly overhyped ("Mystic River"). Here is a film that seems to contain the Lehane mythos boiled down to its inky essence. The story happens almost entirely inside one seedy bar, and the few frozen city blocks around it.

Tom Hardy plays Bob Saganowsky, who sloshes drinks at Cousin Marv's Bar. Bob speaks in a clinched little croak, almost whiny; he isn't terribly bright and is passive almost to the point of transparency. There are rough types who come into the bar, and some try to get a rise out of Bob, but they leave unsatisfied, because it's like kicking a sweet puppy who only comes back for more.
He is, in short, a mook.

Cousin Marv is mostly a figurehead these days, an aging hulk who barely moves from his corner table. His name's on the bar, and he used to run a little action on the side -- he was, he says, somebody who made people sit up when he walked in. But he got pushed by some tougher Chechen mobsters, and flinched, and now it's their bar and he just runs it.

James Gandolfini could play controlled rage better than just about anybody, so Marv is a fitting final screen role for him.

The title comes from the process of picking one bar at random to be the place where all the gambling and other dirty money winds up for the night -- "the safe for the entire city." It soon becomes clear that somebody's looking to hit Marv's the night it's the drop, and Bob gets caught up in the tide of events.

One night Bob is walking home from work and comes across a bloodied puppy dumped in a trash can. The woman who lives there, a waitress named Nadia (Noomi Rapace), helps him patch the dog up, but insists Bob adopt him as his own. He blanches at first, but finally takes on the little pitbull, whom he dubs Rocco. This is, for him, a major addition to his tiny universe, which essentially consists of just the bar and keeping up his dead parents' tidy brownstone.

Accepting the responsibility of the dog changes something in Bob ... or does it? Hardy's performance is one poker face behind another, so we're never quite sure what's going on the other side of that lunkhead mien. Dribs and drabs of information leak out to suggest there's more there. He and Nadia start seeing more of each other, hesitatingly -- it's like two wounded animals sniffing the other's wounds.

Other characters' orbits intersect with that of the bar. There's a perpetually smiling police detective (John Ortiz) who sees Bob at the same church every morning, and wonders why he never takes communion. He starts investigating a stick-up at the bar, and then noses into old crimes that have become part of the neighborhood lore.

There's Eric Deeds (an imposing Matthias Schoenaerts), a hustler with a past connected to Nadia. He casts a baleful eye at Bob for seemingly mysterious reasons, stopping by the bar or his house, claiming Rocco is actually his dog, and dropping idle threats. (Somehow, he makes an umbrella seem weapon-like.)

And then we have the Chechen boss, Chovka, chillingly played by Michael Aronov. He expects Marv and Bob to recover the money stolen during the robbery. You can see the wheels turn in Bob's head, slowly, and in Marv's head, slightly less slowly -- if they could find the money, wouldn't that imply they were in on the job?

Director Michaël R. Roskam takes his time -- too much, really -- building up the suspense, but the plot of "The Drop" eventually gets there.

Video review: "The Dark Knight Rises"

The conclusion of the Batman collaboration between director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale is a big, ambitious film just like "The Dark Knight." And also like its predecessor, "The Dark Knight Rises" is overburdened with too many supporting characters and secondary plot lines.

As the story opens, it has been eight years since Bruce Wayne last donned the caped crusader's cowl. Peace has reigned throughout the land, but then a mysterious terrorist named Bane (Thomas Hardy) arrives. He handily defeats Batman in personal combat and takes the reins of Gotham City.

Meanwhile, super-thief Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) plays the lines of loyalty between the two, whispering ominously about a storm brewing to wipe the city's veil of security away.

The biggest problem with Bane, other than the fact that he pales in comparison to Heath Ledger's Joker, is that his motivations never really come into clear relief. Hardy's choice to play him with an odd speech cadence, coupled with Bane's metallic face mask, also make him difficult to understand.

Familiar faces return, including police commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman), loyal Wayne family butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and weapons guru Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). New on the block is Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young police detective whose importance becomes clearer late in the going.

It's still a worthy piece of filmmaking, especially for those who like their superhero tales in the dark-and-portentous mode. But I can't help thinking the finale would've been better stripped down and sleeker.

In terms of extras, Blu-ray is the only way to go for the serious videophile. The DVD comes only with a single featurette chronicling Bruce Wayne's journey from zero to hero.

The highlight of the Blu-ray edition is "Ending the Knight," a comprehensive making-of documentary examining virtually every aspect of the filmmaking process, from the story concept to special effects. It also includes a gallery of images and a documentary on the Batmobile, chronicling all five of the dark knight's motorized chariots.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "The Dark Knight Rises"

And so the Batman saga ends, not with a bang but an allegory. Director/co-writer Christopher Nolan has made it clear "The Dark Knight Rises" will be the last movie about the caped crusader -- at least that he will make -- and this knowledge seems to have freed him to make a superhero movie that's different from any other in the genre, one in which the superhero has grown tired of the mask and has to be convinced to put it on again.

It's notable that Christian Bale spends far more screen time out of the Batman costume than in.

It's a big, epic, sprawling movie that, like the last entry four years ago, is too overstuffed with tertiary plot lines and secondary characters for its own good.

And, of course, nothing can replace Heath Ledger's unique, disturbing presence as the Joker. Even though he was captured at the end of the last movie, and at one point Gotham City's prison is busted open for all the criminals to escape, there's no half-hearted (and misguided) attempt to cast another actor in that now-iconic role.

As the story opens, eight years have passed since the events in "The Dark Knight." Wayne has not donned Batman's cowl since then, with the populace mistakenly believing that he killed Harvey Dent, who actually went mad and became Two-Face. Dent has become a symbol of the peaceful good times that have endured since -- thanks in part to some draconian laws put in place in Dent's name.

When we first see Bruce Wayne, he seems to have aged 20 years. He has graying hair and a lined face, and walks around with a cane and a severe limp. He's become a recluse, rarely leaving his mansion despite the urging of loyal butler/henchman Alfred (Michael Caine) to do so. You quit being Batman, Alfred tells him, but you didn't start a new life.

The villain here is Bane, played by Tom Hardy underneath a strange metal mask of tubes and 30 pounds of muscle he put on for the role. Bane is a brilliant terrorist who's utterly unnerving, but whose motives never really come into clear relief. He emerges from a mysterious past, supposedly growing up in darkness inside a pit of a prison, and seems to have dedicated his entire life to destroying Batman and the city he loves. Why? We're never really sure.

When Bane first appears on the scene, Bruce resolves to get back in the game. He is cocky and confident in his gadgets and combat abilities, despite a doctor's assessment that he has no cartilage in his knees and scarred internal organs. He shouldn't even be skiing, let alone tangling with super-strong madmen.

Bane easily defeats Batman in personal combat and exiles him. Bane then steals something really, really powerful that belongs to Bruce Wayne and turns it against Gotham. And then he ... waits five months to unleash the destruction. Which just happens to be enough time for Bruce to convalesce and return to foil his plans.

Hardy makes a few bold performance choices, some of which pay off and some don't. Much has been made about his voice, which can be difficult to understand behind the metallic echo of his mask, which resembles a shark's maw coming at  you. Beyond the comprehension issues, Bane speaks in an oddly-inflected pattern with a stiff sort of formality to it. He also has a habit of placing his hands on the lapels of his coat or armor, like a Dickensian barrister puffing himself up.

The other big addition is Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, a slyly seductive jewel thief who tries to walk a risky line between loyalty to Bane and Batman. Neither really trusts her, or her either of them, but there's a connection between her and Bruce Wayne. He represents the 1% and she makes Occupy Wall Street-ish threats about "a storm coming" to wash away the privileged, which supplies an edge to their banter.

I should mention that no one ever actually calls her Catwoman, and she doesn't wear a costume, other than some minimalist sartorial adornment. It's a surprisingly beefier role than you'd expect, and Hathaway has a strong presence in it.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is another important new character as young police detective John Blake -- or, at least, seemingly important. Blake seems to be everywhere during the movie, popping up to assist Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) with a key bit of evidence or even fight alongside Batman. But after the movie I started thinking about what purpose Blake plays in the story, and decided he's really not that pivotal at all, except for that part at the end where ... well, you'll see.

Matthew Modine is another new add as Gordon's right-hand man, Ben Mendelsohn plays a mercenary-minded industrialist making a play for Wayne Enterprises, and Marion Cotillard plays Miranda Tate, a former business partner of Wayne's who got burned on a bad business deal.

Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Bruce Wayne's R&D man, returns to the fold, and apparently has spare Batman suits and gear stuffed in just about every corner of Gotham. Most notably is a flying machine that's part helicopter, part jet and all seriously badass.

I saw this film in a genuine IMAX theater at the Indiana State Museum. More than an hour of the 165-minute film was shot on special IMAX film, and when that entire picture opens up from widescreen to a massive six-story wall of spectacle, it's quite tremendous. This one is definitely worth the ticket upsell.

"The Dark Knight Rises" isn't as good as the last film, but I wouldn't call it a disappointment. If anything, its faults arise from being too ambitious, too big and too much. A shorter film that focused on the dynamic between Batman, Bane and Selina Kyle might've been a better fit for this material. But that's the sort of movie you make when you're starting out something big, not wrapping it up.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"

Like its main character, George Smiley, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" plays its cards very close to its vest -- too close, in fact. The result is a nearly affectless espionage tale, a Cold War spy thriller that's chilly and boasts few thrills.

Smiley is refreshingly different from the standard cinematic spy. He's in late middle age, doesn't move in very much of a hurry, eschews guns (most of the time) and has a personality so dry, it's no surprise that his wife, Anne, has left him. Wearing huge owlish eyeglasses and an unctuous mien, Gary Oldman as Smiley resembles a tobacco store clerk more than he does James Bond.

"Tinker" is based on the 1974 novel by John le Carré, unread by me, which was turned into a seven-part BBC miniseries in 1979, with Alec Guinness playing Smiley. With its dense plot and confusing maze of characters -- I was still struggling to keep the names straight by the end -- the story might have been better suited to the episodic rhythms of television than a two-hour movie.

The film begins with the fall of the leader of British Secret Intelligence Services, known only as Control (John Hurt). He had sent one of his top agents, Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong), to Hungary to learn the identity of a double agent at the very top of their leadership. The mission goes awry, Prideaux is shot, and Control and Smiley, his right-hand man, are brought down in the ensuing scandal.

But was the theory of a mole really nonsense? Suffering through a lonely forced retirement, Smiley is given a shot at redemption when the civilian leadership appoints him to learn the truth. This proves quite a challenge, since the four men Control suspected now run "the Circus," as the members of the intelligence agency refer to themselves.

They are: Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) and Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds).

Alleline would seem to be the most likely suspect, since he openly challenged Control's authority and ended up assuming the position for himself. Alleline has had a great deal of success running "Witchcraft," a super-secret operation that has opened up a pipeline of information from inside the Soviet Union.

Smiley only has a few allies, including a promising young agent, Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch) and an old retiree. He catches a break when Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a rakish spy who first uncovered the theory of the mole and had thought to have gone rogue, turns up at his house.

I won't try to summarize the different twists and turns of the plot, mostly because it remains a blur. It's old-school cloak-and-dagger stuff, with everyone simultaneously suspicious of each other and highly on guard.

Director Tomas Alfredson, the Swede behind the moody vampire drama "Let the Right One In" (which was followed by an American remake), and screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan seem intent on crafting a film that resembles its protagonist too much.

It's one thing to have the main character be fetchingly mysterious, and quite another to have him remain a total cipher. Despite a fine performance by Oldman, George Smiley has no interior, and serves only to investigate and find things out to further the plot. Watching a movie about him is like playing chess against a computer.

2.5 stars out of four