Review: "Motherless Brooklyn"

“Half the city is getting a ride on one of his horses.”
                                   --Paul Randolph

Man, there’s a lot of great stuff going on in “Motherless Brooklyn.” Splendid acting. Terrific cinematography and music. Spot-on period costumes, cars and backdrops. Snappy dialogue and an intricate plot.

It’s not a great movie, but it’s a damned interesting one.

This gorgeous and haunting crime drama, written, directed and starring Edward Norton, is like a beautiful chess board someone has set up with intricately carved pieces. You admire the handiwork that went into them and anticipate how they will be put to use.

Then you get ready to play, and they dump two more sets of pieces onto the board. What was a highfalutin parlor game becomes something of a chaotic mess.

Based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem, it’s set in 1950s New York City along the line dividing the slums, lowlife gumshoes and seedy jazz clubs from the skyscrapers, moneymen and spheres of politics. Norton is Lionel Essrog, the fifth man on the totem pole at a five-man private investigation firm who stumbles from the low end into the high.

Lionel is, by his own description, a mess. He has severe tics and outbursts of embarrassing words or sounds -- "if!" is the most common -- which today we would call Tourette syndrome. But back then it got him labeled as “spastic” or “freakshow,” and that’s by his friends.

“Bailey is what my head calls me,” Lionel explains, and many of his unwilling pronouncements are self-criticism using that nickname. He grew up in a rough foster home, protected by an older boy, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who later became a war hero, his boss and solitary backer.

Lionel’s brain makes all sorts of weird demands on him, like how objects must be ordered in a certain way or provoke another mortifying event. But it also gifts him with a tremendous memory and eye for detail. These are the tools he will bring to bear after Frank is murdered by some toughs sent by the big boys downtown.

The first third of the film is essentially a straight snooper story, and we are bedazzled and befuddled as Lionel travels from place to place, meets new people, takes pictures, tails cars and uncovers info. It’s shot in bright light and vibrant colors.

In the middle section, director Norton turns on the film noir look and mood, the action shifts largely to nighttime and shadows bend into the frame at odd angles. Lionel impersonates a reporter, asks lots of questions, inserts himself into the action and tries to assemble the pieces from the first part -- without much success.

The final act is the most vibrant, but also the most bewildering. There are shades of “Chinatown” by way of “Rain Man.” I enjoyed the hell out of it even as I struggled to make sense of it.

Other actors and story elements float in and out the film, sometimes disappearing for long stretches. The other three guys at the L&L investigation company -- Bobby Cannavale, Dallas Roberts and Ethan Suplee --  which also doubles as a car service when times are slow. Leslie Mann briefly turns up as Frank’s gun moll wife, as beautiful and hard as a nickel-plated .38.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Laura Rose, a beautiful “colored girl” and smart lawyer who would seem to be at the center of whatever Frank was digging up. Cherry Jones as a crusading community organizer fighting the city’s race to convert working-class black neighborhoods into pristine public works. Michael K. Williams as a smooth and tortured jazz man. Willem Dafoe as a seemingly crazed fellow who hangs around the back of important rooms, says a lot and knows even more.

Lurking over the entire film like a threatening cloud is Alec Baldwin as Moses Randolph, a storied public servant who has labored to transform the city for 30 years. He is the commissioner of parks, construction and buildings, planning, and seemingly any other office he wants. Mayors and other elected officials come and go; Mo is eternal.

It’s a grandiose performance by Baldwin, who seems physically immense, like a charging buffalo shaved down and squeezed into a suit. He has a great scene where he and Lionel finally hash things out in a bath house, where Mo reveals his true nature while he describes what having power is really like.

Having true power, Mo explains, means when somebody else has an idea you don’t like, or you just don’t like the person who has it, then that idea goes away. He sees himself as a builder and a doer who denigrates the thinkers whose lofty dreams are never realized.

It’s a scarily mesmerizing soliloquy, not to mention a well-aimed dart at the mentality of those in real life holding the reins of power.

I sat back and marveled at “Motherless Brooklyn,” the keen way it evokes a place and time while effortless throwing off great writing like a description of being “calm as Hindu cows.” I can’t say I was completely engaged by the film; my guess is most people will find it confusing and scattershot.

But I was never less than fascinated.

Video review: "Aquaman"

There are trashy movies and there are garbage movies. The former are decent flicks that engage in various tawdry indulgences and lowered ambitions; the latter have surrendered to them completely.

As the late, great Pauline Kael said, there is trash and then there is glorious trash. And while “Aquaman” may not exactly be glorious, it is an entertaining film that revels in its own trashiness.

Yes, Jason Momoa still can’t act his way out of a bag. But if any actor today deserves to have the “Seinfeld” term of “mimbo” bestowed upon him, it’s Momoa. He’s easy on the eyes, if your thing is beefy-but-not-overly-‘roided Polynesian dudes with long dark ringlets.

He doesn’t exactly look like the sort of guy who swims with the fishes and talks to them too, but he’s a charismatic, swarthy presence.

I’ll pause here to note that once again Hollywood has managed to take a blond superhero and turn him brunette. Captain America, the Human Torch, the Flash -- it’s practically an entire super-team’s worth of color changers. Even Thor was revealed to have brown roots when his ‘do got buzzed in his last solo flick. Aquaman at least has a little sun-dappling around the edges.

Anyway, the premise is that Arthur is the long-lost son of the queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman), who fell in love with a land dweller (Temuera Morrison) and grew up estranged from his people. He still has the powers of a high-born Atlantean, including super-strength, durability and swimming crazy fast, plus the additional trick of communicating with sea life.

Worlds collide when his brother, King Orm (Patrick Wilson), declares war on the surface world -- mostly as an excuse to unite the tribes of Atlantis and have himself declared the supreme Ocean Master.

(Sounds like a fad diet.)

Aided by wise sage Vulko (Willem Dafoe) and plucky princess Mera (Amber Heard), Arthur goes on a quest to recover the lost trident of his forbears, depose his wayward sibling and bring about peace. Besides Orm the heavy duties are shared by Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a modern-day pirate who bears a special grudge against Aquaman.

The realm of Atlantis is represented in Day-Glo colors and trippy mood music, as director James Wan and script men Will Beall and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (got enough names, dude?) milk the comedy and science fiction angles.

It’s like “Flash Gordon” meets the briny deep. You may find yourself sniggering at this trashy gen, but doubtless having a good time while doing it.

Bonus features are pretty nice. They include breakdowns of key scenes and the following featurettes: “Going Deep Into the World of Aquaman,” Becoming Aquaman,” “James Wan: World Builder,” “Aqua Tech,” “Atlantis Warfare,” “The Dark Depths of Black Manta,” “Heroines of Atlantis,” “Villainous Training,” “Kingdoms of the Seven Seas,” “Creating Undersea Creatures” and “A Match Made in Atlantis.”

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Video review: "At Eternity's Gate"

A lot of people were surprised when Willem Dafoe earned an Oscar nomination for “At Eternity’s Gate,” a tiny art film about the last days of painter Vincent van Gogh. But for those lucky few who’ve seen the movie, they know the accolade is well-deserved indeed.

Previous cinematic portraitures of van Gogh have focused on his turbulent life, especially his relationships with his brother, Theo, and fellow painter Paul Gauguin. And, of course, there’s the infamous time he cut off his own ear.

What “Gate” brings to the mix is indelibly linking van Gogh’s mental instability with his art. Director Julian Schnabel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Louise Kugelberg and Jean-Claude Carrière, include lots of examinations of his paintings, including less famous ones like the one from which the movie takes its title, “Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate).”

The camera follows van Gogh around the countryside as he looks for scenes to capture, seeing the world through his eyes.  Dafoe portrays him as a woman for whom painting is his whole life, because he’s disturbed and thrilled by what he sees and wants to share it with everyone.

It portrays the ear incident and its aftermath, but as simply one more step along the unstable path he trod, instead of a fetishistic totem of self-hatred.

Gorgeous, haunting and insightful, “At Eternity’s Gate” is a harrowing portrait of a mad who embraced both beauty and madness, and joined the two on canvas.

There’s a tendency for small video releases like this to have very skimpy bonus features, but this one is the pleasing exception. There’s a feature-length audio track by Schnabel and Kugelberg (who also edited the film), and three making-of documentary shorts: “Made by a Painter,” “Channeling Van Gogh” and “Vision of Van Gogh.”

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Review: "Vox Lux"

"Vox Lux" is a movie about... something. I'm honestly not sure what. It stars Natalie Portman in the second half as a Lady Gaga-esque pop superstar struggling in her relationships with her sister, daughter and manager. In the first half the character shows how she got where she is, parlaying a horrible childhood incident into a career.

The last 20 minutes is Celeste's big comeback concert -- though don't you dare call it that -- and we're treated to an elaborate stage show of lights, pyrotechnics and exuberant dancing as Portman warbles through various techno-tweaked tunes that could have been sung by, well, anybody.

The Celeste of the first half is a sweet kid of 14 tempted by the sparkle of fame and fortune, and in the second half she's a total rhymes-with-witch who seems decades older than her 31 years, resentful of all the attention she gets while not-so-secretly feeding off it to sustain her sense of self.

All of this is accompanied by flat, emotionless narration by Willem Dafoe. It's the sort of narration that doesn't tell you anything the movie doesn't, so you wonder why it's there.

Surprisingly, it's the second half that's hard to get through. Portman plays Celeste as a shrill, nasty harpy who somehow forgot she's supposed to be the nice girl. There's no emotional match with the wide-eyed kid she was, played by Raffey Cassidy. We wonder what happened in the in-between.

I'd have liked to have seen that movie.

We follow Celeste around as she has nasty encounters with the press, with a restaurant manager who asks for a photo, with her manager (Jude Law), her sister, Ellie (Stacy Martin), her teen daughter, Albertine (Cassidy again) and well, pretty much everybody. Celeste is estranged from Ellie, who writes her songs and takes care of her kid, but gets treated like dirt for her trouble.

The first part is more interesting, when a disturbed classmate shoots up Celeste's class, wounding her seriously in the neck. She wears braces and decorative collars for the rest of the movie. After she and Ellie come up with a heartfelt song for the memorial ceremony, it becomes a national anthem. The manager (never named) is brought in to guide her, which follows a predictable path of ear-candy songs, bizarro makeup effects and squirmy dance moves.

What's the point of it all? I dunno. Writer/director Brady Corbet seems to be trying to fashion a morality tale about how even the most earnest intentions can become twisted in the caldron of the celebrity-making machine. Sounds like a terrible bargain, but not an interesting enough one to watch for two hours.

Review: "At Eternity's Gate"

When Willem Dafoe was still young, there was something about him that seemed quite ancient. Now that he’s older, he retains an eerie vitality that allows him to effortlessly play a man three decades younger than himself.

Many say the art of Vincent van Gogh is similar ageless.

Here was a man quite literally obsessed with his work, and yet he only sold a single painting during his short lifetime. “At Eternity’s Gate” is a chronicle of his last, lonely days living in the tiny villages of Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, where he cranked out an astonishing body of work that will live on in immortality.

I’ll confess, at first I was put off by yet another film about van Gogh. Just last year we had “Loving Vincent,” an Oscar-nominated animated movie that used imagery by modern painters to relate the story.

And yet I found “At Eternity’s Gate” to be a breath of fresh air. Dafoe gives a transformative performance as the artist, depicting a man as wrapped up by his own demons as his desire to share his vision of how he sees the world.

Rather than portraying von Gogh as a man who made great art despite his mental instability, director Julian Schnabel, who co-wrote the script with Louise Kugelberg and Jean-Claude Carrière, shows them as inextricably entwined.

Dafoe’s lean, rawboned face turns out to be a surprisingly good match for the features shown in van Gogh’s various self-portraits. The photography by Benoît Delhomme is stunning, with many wordless passages of him just wandering around the French countryside, feeling inspired and feverishly getting it down on canvass.

Rupert Friend plays his brother, Theo, who supports him financially and, on the rare occasions when they’re in the same place, emotionally. They have a very tender moment where Theo comes to the asylum where Vincent has been committed, and cuddles him just as they did on cold nights as boys.

Oscar Isaac makes an impression as fellow painter and friend Paul Gauguin, who is angry and confident to van Gogh’s placid timidity. Both struggled to establish themselves in the face of Impressionism, but while van Gogh wanted to evolve from it and create a new form painting builton what he called “sunshine,” Gauguin rejected the old masters entirely. (Though he concedes Monet is “not bad.”)

Mads Mikkelsen and Mathieu Amalric play, respectively, a priest who struggles to reconcile van Gogh’s faith in God with paintings he considers to be ugly and disturbing, and Dr. Paul Gachet, one of van Gogh’s doctors and the subject of one of his most famous paintings.

The film’s title comes from one of van Gogh’s lesser-known works (if there is such a thing), “Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate).” Van Gogh speaks about his love for painting nature, musing that while flowers may fade and wilt, his capturing of them in paint will live on -- or at least have a chance to.

I liked how the film handled van Gogh’s infamous ear cutting. Rather than fetishizing the incident, Schnabel treats it as just one more episode for a man who struggled to reconcile the real world with the disparate, chaotic one he experienced in his mind. After the incident, the director depicts it by just having Dafoe’s head turned away from that side.

Lovely and insightful, “At Eternity’s Gate” celebrates the art of Vincent van Gogh without trying to obscure the madness and genius of the man behind it.

Video review: "The Florida Project"

Every serious film enthusiastic always has at least one favorite film that doesn’t make the short list of Best Picture Academy Award nominees. I’ve learned to take the exclusions in stride -- tastes vary, the pre-awards hype game is chaos incarnate, and the Oscar nomination formula is just this side of goat entrails and knucklebone dice in terms of decipherability.

So I wasn’t terribly disheartened when my favorite film of 2017, “Blade Runner: 2049,” didn’t get a Best Picture nod. The one that did really cut to the bone, though, was “The Florida Project.”

This magnificent little film, shot on a shoestring with mostly non-actors, had a vibrancy and an authenticity that leapt off the screen. There is essentially no real story, just the wandering camera as we fall a group of kids living in a garish, cheap motel in the backwaters surrounding Walt Disney World and the other, lesser tourist attractions near Orlando, Fla.

Life is seedy and tenuous here, but it holds an ocean of grace.

Brooklynn Kimberly Prince plays Moonee, the 6-year-old protagonist. She lives with her mom, Halley (Bria Vinaite), who resides in the neon-hued Magic Castle motel, working itinerantly at reselling cheap perfume to tourists, stripping, or selling her body, as opportunities arise. Moonee and the other children are left to roam on their own, getting into minor trouble like spitting on cars or hitting strangers up for change to buy ice cream.

Willem Dafoe, the only recognizable actor with a substantial part, shines as Bobby, the manager of the Magic Castle. People come and go, there’s always something to fix, and Bobby watches over the tide of humanity like a beneficent oversee. Bobby plays the part of the hardass, cracking down on illegal activity, especially prostitution, and chirping at the wayward kids. But any time he threatens to throw anybody out, things always seem to work out in the end.

Director Sean Baker (“Tangerine”), who co-wrote the script with Chris Bergoch, gives us a film that is unstructured in terms of narrative but is neatly sown together in its emotionality. Whenever we are tempted to judge the people we see, such as Halley’s erstwhile efforts as a mother, we are quickly reminded that these characters are doing the best with the scarce tools they have.

It’s a reminder that behind every land of dreams, there’s a grimy backlot where the support crew toil in unseen majesty.

Bonus materials are modest but insightful. They include “Under the Rainbow: Making The Florida Project,” a short documentary; bloopers and outtakes; and interviews with the cast and crew.

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Review: "Murder on the Orient Express"

The remake of “Murder on the Orient Express” starts slow, chuffing away and spinning its wheels with little forward movement, but gradually builds a head of steam. It propels us through the usual twists and turns of a classic whodunit, as a dozen suspects are queried and sorted in the search for a killer.

By the end of the film, it has completely transcended the murder/mystery genre and become an emotionally affecting treatise on right and wrong, evil deeds and revenge.

I wasn’t expecting this movie, but I confess I wasn’t expecting much at all. I’ve neither read the book by Agatha Christie nor seen the 1974 film version.

(I assure you I mean to: it’s currently sitting in my Netflix DVD queue. Yes, some of us still pay for the shiny disc plan.)

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot -- everybody wants to call him “Hercules” -- an ostentatiously mustachioed gentleman whose courtly demeanor hides a mind as troubled as it is brilliant.

Poirot is vexed by “imbalance” -- whether it be a tie knotted askew, two boiled eggs for breakfast that are not the same size or a plot to take another human life. People wonder at his marvelous deductions, but as he explains to an admirer, when things are not perfectly aligned it stands out to him as plain as the nose on your face.

Even if, like me, you are innocent of the book and other movie, you probably know the basic plot: Poirot is plopped onto a train full of colorful characters, and one of them turns up gruesomely dead. Trapped by an avalanche that has derailed the locomotive, they stew together as the masterful investigator sifts through the evidence, which includes a torrent of lies and misdirection.

Michael Green provides the screenplay, which near as I can figure follows the book and other film pretty closely. The ethnicities and vocations of a few of the characters are shifted around, but the basic dynamics remain the same.

This is billed as one of those classic “all-star casts” -- though, truth be told, it’s more like half a cast of stars, most of them faded, a quarter recognizable character actors and a quarter you’ve never heard of.

Johnny Depp is the biggest name, playing a slimy, scarred American businessman named Ratchett. Michelle Pfeiffer turns up as Caroline Hubbard, an often-divorced woman apparently looking for her next sugar daddy, and Poirot is her prime candidate. Josh Gad is Hector MacQueen, Ratchett’s resentful secretary, and his manservant, Masterman, is played by Derek Jacobi.

Judi Dench, alas, is given little to do as a snooty displaced Russian princess, though Daisy Ridley delights and surprises as Mary Debenham, a smart and resourceful governess. Lucy Boynton and Sergei Polunin are addled dancers/diplomats/royalty.

Willem Dafoe plays Gerhard Hardman, a xenophobic German scientist, and Leslie Odom Jr. plays Arbuthnot, a black British doctor. Penelope Cruz is Pilar Estravados, a nurse turned missionary whose job is to make devilish pronouncements about the evil that men (and maybe women) do.

It’s a sumptuous movie of gorgeous costumes and exquisite settings. The Orient Express is not some railway for bumpkins, but a four-star hotel for the rich on wheels. Somehow even after the train engine is stopped, there’s still plenty of heat and five-course meals.

I’ll admit the turnabouts of the plot started to grow a little tiresome for me -- “It’s him! No, it’s her!” -- but the movie really starts to gel just past the midway point. Poirot is basically a human Google: he knows everything about everyone, everywhere.

I wouldn’t think to give any hints about the ending, other than to see it’s a humdinger. Forty years after it was a movie, and 40 more for the book, “Murder on the Orient Express” still has surprises aplenty.

Review: "The Florida Project"

“Do you know why this is my favorite tree? Because it’s tipped over but it’s still growing.”
                               --Moonee

It is the nature of children to adapt to circumstance, even that which no child should have to bear. Their intrinsic miracle is that they can find joy just about anywhere.

In “The Florida Project,” 6-year-old Moonee (a vibrant Brooklynn Kimberly Prince) lives on the edge of the most magical place in the world, the Walt Disney Resort near Orlando, Fla. But hers is not the world of $100-a-day admissions to theme parks, luxury hotels and getaway vacations.

Rather, it’s the seedy underbelly of minimum wage workers who feed the tourism machine, living in towns like Kissimmee, packed together in squalid motels slapped with bright paint so as not to depress the out-of-towners when they’re passing by on their shuttle bus to the Magic Kingdom.

I did not grow up in this world, but I observed it from close at hand. When you are reared in a town that’s famous for visitors coming and going to partake in illusions, you quickly learn that perception and reality are often at cross purposes.

(I still chuckle upon meeting people who say they found Orlando “too touristy,” and with a few queries ascertain that they never got closer to the city’s downtown than International Drive, aka “I-Drive,” some 15 minutes away.)

In the stifling humidity of the Central Florida summer, where shirts are stuck perpetually to the smalls of backs, Moonee and other kids roam feral between the motels and third-rate tourist attractions, unattended by working mothers and long abandoned by their fathers. Moonee and her best friend, Scooty (Christopher Rivera), curse, spit on cars and hit up soft strangers for free ice cream.

Their behavior is a little shocking at first, but director Sean Baker (“Tangerine”), who co-wrote the script with Chris Bergoch, soon settles us into an episodic rhythm of observation. We witness the strong connections between these children, and come to see their daily life as not so different from that of Scout and Jem roaming around their quaint town in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Watching over them is Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the beneficent manager of the fuschia-hued Magic Castle motel where Moonee and Scooty live with their mothers. Part caretaker, part social worker, part cop, Bobby works tirelessly to keep everything aboveboard, though there’s always something broken. Bobby repeatedly threatens to throw people out, but the offer of another last chance is always forthcoming. Seemingly the only line he’s unwilling to cross is allowing prostitution to take place on “the premises.”

There’s not a lot of narrative to “The Florida Project,” just the ebb and flow of the summer tide. Kids rotate in and out of Moonee’s circle, with shy, red-haired Jancey (Valeria Cotto) entering the sphere and gradually absorbing its brash energy.

Bria Vinaite plays Halley, Moonee’s mom, an occasional stripper who’s always on the prowl for a quick buck. Tatted up generously, with a slattern strut and hair to match the Magic Castle’s walls, Halley works the nicer locales where the tourists stay, crashing the free breakfast buffets and buying cheap perfume to sell at markup. She brings Moonee along to help with the pitch, because what kind of scammer brings a little kid with them?

The movie edges right up to daring us to condemn Halley, but then keeps pulling us back. Any conventional narrative would quickly dub her the villain of the piece, the quintessential terrible mother. But Baker also asks us to revel in Halley’s defiant rebel nature, a woman clinging to the last rung of society’s ladder, extending two middle fingers to anyone who would disparage her, or especially her kid.

There’s a quick scene where Halley gives the helpful woman who works in the Magic Castle’s laundry some weed, and she thanks her with a hug, saying everything will be all right. Halley limply accepts the embrace, indifferent to the woman’s soothing outreach, and we sense that Halley is not simply a mean person, but one in whom some of the gears that guide emotionality are just plain missing.

“The Florida Project” is a triumph of grainy verisimilitude. Watching the film is like stepping behind the backdrop of a theater stage to find real life, grimy and exuberant, turning away behind the pretty façade.

Review: "The Fault in Our Stars"

"The Fault in Our Stars" is an exhausting movie. And I mean that in a good way.

It's been awhile since a film left me so emotionally wrung out. This tender-yet-sharp drama about two teenagers with terminal cancer falling in love, based on the best-selling YA book by John Green, promises to be the no-BS version of tragic young romance. And, mostly, it is.

"This is the truth. Sorry," introduces/apologizes our heroine, Hazel Grace (a remarkable Shailene Woodley).

Hazel, 17, had thyroid cancer which has spread to her lungs, forcing her to constantly breathe with the aid of an oxygen tank and counting her dwindling days on this mortal coil. Smart and realistic, she attends a church support group for young cancer patients, mostly to appease her loving but slightly smothering parents (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell).

There she meets Augustus Waters, an exuberant character exuberantly played by Ansel Elgort. A former cancer patient himself -- his right leg is prosthetic, rendering him a cyborg, he boasts -- he's mostly there to support his best friend, Isaac (Nat Wolff), who sacrificed one eye to the disease and is in danger of losing the other.

Augustus is a braggart and a charmer, the sort of fellow who coasts through life buoyed by his own outsized expectations for himself, telling the group he fully expects to live "an extraordinary life." But it's the retiring Hazel he can't keep his eyes off of, and soon the pair have struck up a deep friendship that dances right up to the line of love in full bloom.

The chemistry between Woodley and Elgort is terrific, with her the wary, inner-directed girl obsessed with damaging as few other lives before she dies, and he the world-conquering hero who knows not fear or hesitation.

Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who wrote the terrific "(500) Days of Summer," don't go in for a lot of storytelling tricks to endear the couple to the audience. Rather, they focus on building the connection between Hazel and Augustus, and through them we are drawn in.

Director Josh Boone mostly stays out of the way, eliciting strong performances from his cast while remaining as true to the book's tone as possible. (It's unread by me, but from what I've gathered it appears to be an extremely faithful adaptation.)

Soon after meeting, Hazel and Augusts each invite the other to read their favorite book. His is the novelization of a video game ("Counterinsurgence 2"), showing that Augustus is bright if not worldly. Hazel gives him "An Imperial Affliction," the tale of a girl who dies of cancer, written by a mysterious author named Peter Van Houten who has decamped to Amsterdam, eschewing his fans and promising never to write another word.

Later, Hazel and Augustus will get a chance to travel to the Netherlands to meet him, a trip filled with magic and discovery, except for the actual part where they meet their beloved author (Willem Dafoe).

(Here's a pro tip on the interpersonal skills of writers: Expect to be disappointed.)

The film is set in Indianapolis (Green was born and lives here), though it was shot in and around Pittsburgh. (Darn those miserly Indiana film tax incentives!) If you look hard one can spot a few cues in the background, most notably a picnic scene at the "Funky Bones" outdoor art exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 100 Acres. Augustus also rocks a Rik Smits jersey at one point.

"The Fault in Our Stars" is ultimately a life-affirming film, if one that favors sour realities over saccharine fantasies. "I don't want this particular life," Hazel admits. This movie is not afraid to show the bottom of being 17 and knowing you are soon to die, and that's pretty low. But the view from there is still uplifting.

Review: "The Hunter"

"The Hunter" has the mood and feel of an understated spy drama, a la "The American," but shifted to an environmental story backdrop. Willem Dafoe plays a gun for hire sent to find, and kill, the last Tasmanian Tiger in existence.

It's the story of a man whose soul has been hollowed out by his profession, until he is given a quest that seems impossible. At first he is irritated by the distractions surrounding his job, but over time the job itself takes a back seat to the humanist themes.

Director Daniel Nettheim and screenwriter Alice Addison, who adapted the story from a novel by Julia Leigh, go for a minimalist approach with the characters and plot, keeping things spare and close to the chest. They rely on the audience to intuit the roiling emotions going on behind Dafoe's cool mask of detachment, rather than employing overt displays or manipulative techniques.

The result is a film that is more cerebral than visceral, with the gorgeous, untouched Tasmanian landscapes providing the lush ornamentation that the narrative does not.

Martin David -- we are certain this is not his real name --  is hired by a company called Redfish, which believes that the Tasmanian tiger holds the secret to a nerve toxin that will bring them billions if weaponized. Not only do they want it, but they want to make sure no one else has it.

(The tiger is not really a tiger, but a thylacine, a marsupial more closely related to a kangaroo than a feline predator.)

When he arrives on the Australian island, Martin finds himself the subject of much more scrutiny that he would like. He's put up in lodgings in the remote home of a family in a state of disarray. Two children, Sass and Bike (Morgana Davies, Finn Woodlock), seem to be running the show while their mother (Frances O'Connor) stays entirely in bed.

Sass drops f-bombs like a sailor, while Bike doesn't speak at all. The house is a total mess -- the bathtub is coated in grime, the electrical generator quit long ago -- and Sass reassures Martin their father will return soon to fix it all. But Jack Mindy (Sam Neill), a helpful local, reports that the man of the house, a tree-hugging type, when missing last year.

Most of the local industry is tied to logging, but the local "greenies" have temporarily put a stop to it with an environmental impact study, raising tensions to a keen edge. The loggers take Martin for one of their foes, and his SUV is vandalized.

At first Martin spends most of his time out in the bush, setting traps and carefully marking his map in an attempt to find his elusive prey. Nettheim follows the particulars of the craft with an almost fetishistic attention to detail.

But Martin finds himself spending more and more time at the house, interacting with the kids and the mother, once she emerges from her fog of narcotic isolation. Dafoe gives us glimmers of his character's inner changes, as he suddenly beholds a life within his grasp beyond stalking and slaying.

The story rushes a little too fast toward the end, as Martin makes some bold choices based on his feelings for the family he has semi-adopted. But the movie hasn't really earned this sudden transition, showing us the beginnings of Martin's step away from his old life, but not the middle.

Still, "The Hunter" is an exercise in lean storytelling, chilling and sharp.

3 stars out of four