Review: "The Ottoman Lieutenant"

“The Ottoman Lieutenant” has the look and feel of a literary adaptation, something in the Merchant/Ivory tradition of “A Room with a View,” if it was given a more overtly soap opera tone. But it’s an original screenplay by Jeff Stockwell that contains familiar notes from other historical romance/dramas.

The best thing about it is newcomer Hera Hilmar as Lillie, an independent-minded young woman in 1914 Philadelphia. The daughter of a well-to-do family, she’s an old maid of 23 who’s chosen to work as a nurse rather than get married and push out a passel of kids. Then she is introduced to a dashing doctor, Jude (Josh Hartnett), who helps run a missionary hospital on the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), who is on a fundraising tour in the States.

Using her inheritance and over the objections of tut-tutting parents, Lillie resolves to send a truck that belonged to her late brother along with a shipment of medical supplies. Of course, she needs to go along herself to ensure its safe delivery … as well as satisfy her craving for adventure in an exotic land that is on the cusp of war.

Hilmar has a wide, strong face and an obstinate chin, and projects the aura of a proto-feminist whose worst possible outcome in life is doing exactly what is expected of her. She’s been in a few small films and TV shows, but has a bunch of films in various states of production, which I’ll be looking forward to.

Director Joseph Ruben has an eclectic resume that includes everything from sci-fi thrillers like “Dreamscape” to dumb action films (“Money Train”) and psychological thrillers (“Sleeping with the Enemy”). He lets his camera roam over the Turkish landscape, which segues from harsh deserts and mountains to sweeping fields and lake islands. (Most of the indoor stuff was shot in Czechoslovakia.)

The title concerns Ismail, a stalwart Ottoman officer played by Michiel Huisman, a Dutch actor best known for playing the smirking mercenary Daario on “Game of Thrones.” Ismail comes from a long line of military heroes and feels the need to live up to those expectations, while having more modernistic sentiments about things like a Muslim man dallying with a Christian American woman.

He helps escort Lillie through the desert on the way to the mission, where they encounter Christian bandits (Affif Ben Badra plays their leader) in a sequence that has a very Lawrence of Arabia Lite feel to it. They exchange glances and, later, more intimate things.

Of course, Dr. Jude isn’t terribly thrilled about their romance, having designs upon Lillie for himself. Hartnett plays the doctor as a basically decent guy who projects himself as a progressive Christian, but has some very old-fashioned ideas about gender, religion and nationality.

Ben Kingsley rounds out the cast as Dr. Garrett Woodruff, the founder of the mission who is wallowing in misery because of a personal tragedy, about which we’ll soon learn more (but can surely guess). He takes out his anger on this around him, and initially Lillie becomes a main target.

Meanwhile, World War I is revving up and the Russians could be arriving any day now. More wounded show up in the hospital, and there’s deadly tension between the local Christians and Muslims. It’s choose-up-sides time, including for Lillie and her two beaus.

(I should mention the film has an “R” rating for “war violence” from the MPAA, but barely should have merited a PG-13. You can literally see worse stuff on broadcast television.)

I liked a lot of things about “The Ottoman Lieutenant,” especially Hera Hilmar, without being quite swept up in the experience as a whole. It’s a very old-fashioned story without a lot of surprises. You can almost picture the cheap romance novel version: “She was caught between two worlds – and two lovers!”

I guess that counts as literature.

Video review: "The Jungle Book"

Here’s to show that not every recent remake has been a total waste of time. I actually prefer the new live-action version of “The Jungle Book,” with a heavy assist from CGI animals, to the original animated film from 1967. This one amps up the action, tamps down the musical numbers to an acceptable level, and delivers a fun and rousing family-friendly action adventure.

Neel Sethi is Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the jungle, especially adoptive mother Raksha (voice of Lupita Nyong’o) and Bagheera, a helpful black panther voiced by Ben Kingsley. But Shere Khan (Idris Elba), a hateful Bengal tiger, reviles all humans and wants Mowgli between his jaws. After tragedy, the boy is on the lam.

He meets up with Baloo, a lazy bear (Bill Murray) who wants to use Mowgli for his own purposes – mostly involving procuring honey – but starts to develop a tender spot for the kid. They face off with King Louie (Christopher Walken), a giant orangutan with his own monkey army who demands Mowgli give him the human secret of the “Red Flower” – the ability to create fire.

It’s interesting how this is a twist on the usual dynamic in human/animal stories. Here most of the animals, even benevolent ones like Baloo, are looking to exploit Mowgli for his physical attributes, instead of the other way around.

The digitally animated creatures are completely believable – their eyes, fur, movements and anthropomorphic emotions all seem quite authentic. When Shere Khan is bearing down, we can practically feel his breath on our necks.

The action scenes can be pretty intense, so the smallest children may need a little reassurance (or a pass until they’re older).

With its fancy computerized critters and throwback charm, “The Jungle Book” is a pleasing mix of old and new.

Bonus features are good, though you’ll have to upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack to get most of them. The DVD comes only with a featurette on creating King Louie layer by digital layer. With the Blu-ray you add a making-of documentary with director Jon Favreau and his visual effects team, a feature on the casting call for Mowgli and an audio commentary track with Favreau.

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Review: "The Jungle Book"

Disney certainly has an appetite for "Jungle Book" iterations. Or at least they think we do. Lucky for them, they're right ... at least when it comes to good ones.

Beyond the cheesy 1967 animated feature, there was its (wisely) forgotten sequel, "The Jungle Book 2" in 2003; "TaleSpin," a short-lived 1990 TV spinoff; a live-action version in 1994 starring a nearly 30-year-old Jason Scott Lee as the boy Mowgli; another live-action version in 1998 that went straight to video; an animated cheapie in 2010; and another TV series that's still running.

The newest version directed by Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") is a pleasing mix of old and new elements. It uses high-end CGI to render all the animals, and the results are pretty stunning. Neel Sethi plays Mowgli, a "man-cub" abandoned in the jungle and raised by wolves, particularly fierce mother Raksha (voice by Lupita Nyong'o), with a little help from wise black panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley).

The animals still talk, as they did in the books, and recite Rudyard Kipling's verse containing wisdom from the mouths of creatures. The action is fairly intense -- it was a bit scary for our 2-year-old -- and quite well-choreographed.

This is the sort of movie designed expressly for kids but entertaining enough to keep their parents engaged.

And yes, they do bust out a few iconic songs from the '67 movie, including "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wan'na Be Like You," sung by Bill Murray as the bear Baloo and Christopher Walken as the massive ape King Louie, respectively. Both end up serving as comic relief in the middle of some tense sequences.

Murray's version is actually quite charming, and in general his voice work is so emotive and spot-on that I hereby forgive him for the "Garfield" movies. Walken does a talk-singing thing that almost ends up in yodeling territory.

Scarlett Johansson also has a brief role as Kaa the mesmerizing serpent, but her best contribution is a gorgeous rendition of "Trust in Me" that plays over the end credits. Kaa actually helped Mowgli in the books, but here he's a she, and she's all bad.

The story mainly revolves around Mowgli's conflict with Shere Khan (Idris Elba), a massive Bengal tiger who deeply resents a boy living among the jungle denizens. A human wielding "the red flower" (fire) left him scarred and blind in one eye, and now the power-hungry feline wants to exact his revenge on all their kind.

Bagheera and the alpha wolf, Akela (Giancarlo Esposito), decide to return Mowgli to the human village in the name of maintaining comity between the jungle species, but their plans go awry.

Mowgli ends up under the protection of Baloo, a large and lazy bear who wants him to use his human ingenuity to get at all the wonderful honeycomb sticking to a cliff. He says it's for his hibernation, but as others point out jungle bears don't hibernate.

"It's not total hibernation, but I do take naps," he sniffs.

Favreau and screenwriter Justin Marks wisely keep the preachy life-lessons stuff to a bare minimum. The only real moral of the story is that humans shouldn't try to be animals, and vice versa -- but that doesn't mean they can't get along.

Sethi is winsome and agreeable as Mowgli, but as you might guess his character is just a vantage point from which the audience can view all the amazing creatures and action.

I was never a big fan of the old Disney animated film, and most of the other cinematic and TV versions have passed me by. This new "The Jungle Book" manages to seem fresh and full of energy, and that says something all on its own.

Video review: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

Ridley Scott is one of my favorite movie directors, but it’s hard to deny the man is responsible for his fair share of duds. He’s had a bit of a string of them lately, usually as a result of trying to redo previous films that didn’t really need another iteration: 2010’s lackluster “Robin Hood,” the bewildering “Prometheus” from 2012.

“Exodus: Gods and Kings” is essentially Scott’s version of “The Ten Commandments,” with Moses and pharaoh Ramesses duking it out over the fate of the Jewish people, with plagues and miracles descending on high with equal fervor.

Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic hasn’t aged well – it plays now as a remarkable artifact of old-Hollywood hokum. But it wasn’t exactly crying out for a remake.

The result is a rather dull affair, with Christian Bale as Moses, a prince of Egypt revealed to be a Jew, spending years in his desert exile communing with the Lord, who takes the form of a small boy. Eventually he returns to Egypt and the predictable special effects fireworks crank up, along with plenty of battles. Here Moses wears armor and comes off closer to Spartacus than the robed holy man of scripture.

We’re further distracted by the heavily mascaraed presence of Joel Edgerton as Ramesses. Gosh knows I am not one to kowtow to politically correct imperatives. But casting an Australian as an Egyptian pharaoh is at least a 9.4 on the scale of White People Screwing Up Historical Stuff.

It’s a nice-looking film, with terrific costumes and sets and CG backdrops. As you’d expect of a Ridley Scott flick, the action scenes are staged crisply and energetically. But the characters all seem so glum and lifeless, as if they’ve been drained of their vital essence. Bale is so dirge-like in his disposition he makes his Bruce Wayne seem like a party animal.

Ultimately, “Exodus” fails the first test of filmmaking: why does this movie need to exist? It doesn’t, and we needn’t bother.

The movie is being given an excellent video release with a spate of bonus features, though you’ll have to pay more for the best stuff.

The DVD comes with eight deleted and extended scenes, plus a feature-length audio commentary track by Scott and co-screenwriter Jeffrey Caine. Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you add another deleted scene and “The Exodus Historical Guide,” a feature-length trivia track.

Go for the 3-D collector’s edition combo pack, and you add an entire blu-ray disc of bonus features. These include “Keepers of the Covenant,” a feature-length documentary on the making of the film, a historical perspective on Moses, photo galleries, promotional featurettes and more.

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Video review: "The Boxtrolls"

“The Boxtrolls” was easily my favorite animated film of last year – partly because the stop-motion gem is so visually alive and imaginative, but also because there really wasn’t much in the way of competition. Let’s face it, once we got past this movie and one or two others, 2014 was something of a cartoon wasteland.

This picture, based on a book by Alan Snow, simply oozes with British culture and appeal, from the Cockney accents and damp cobblestone streets down to the diaspora of wonky teeth. Set in the late 19th or early 20th century, the story concerns a secret society of gentle pointy-headed critters who live underground and wear castoff cardboard boxes instead of clothes.

They don’t have a discernible language or even names; they each go by whatever picture is on their boxes, which they pilfer – along with many other things – from the humans above. The exception is Eggs (voice of Isaac Hempstead-Wright), a human boy who was kidnapped (sort of) by the boxtrolls as a baby and raised as one of their own.

Their adventures take them above ground, where the terrifying Archibald Snatcher (a delightful Ben Kingsley) has appointed himself chief boxtroll catcher. Soon most of the troll population has been grabbed up and tossed into his dungeons. The daughter of a local lord (Elle Fanning) provides reluctant help, mostly out of resentment toward her absentee father.

It seems Snatcher dreams of joining the cadre of “White Hats” – genteel gentlemen who run the town, ostensibly -- though they don’t seem to do more than sit around sampling exotic cheeses. By portraying the boxtrolls as a scourge, Snatcher hopes to stoke public fear and use it to springboard himself into their good graces.

Visually arresting and impishly funny, “The Boxtrolls” is a family-friendly treat.

Fortunately, the film is being released on video with a host of excellent extra features. There’s a feature-length commentary track by directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, and a raft of featurettes touching on all aspects of production, from casting the voice actors to creating a fancy ballroom dance scene with stop-motion puppets.

There are also preliminary animatic sequences and much more.

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Review: "The Boxtrolls"

I thought last year a slow one for quality animated films, but if anything 2014 has been even duller. “Frozen” finally came along at year’s end to brighten things up, and this time September has delivered its own wondrous surprise: “The Boxtrolls.”

This stop-motion gem is one of the best of its ilk since “Coraline.” It’s a whiz-bang collection of fun action, Dickensian backdrop, cute critters and one really nasty, yet pleasing, villain.

Based on a novel by Alan Snow, the story centers on the titular trolls, who live underground and wear old cardboard boxes instead of clothes. Though they tend to pilfer things left unattended, they’re more tinkerers who love to build junk than malicious marauders. They go by the names of whatever’s on their box: Fish, Shoe, etc.

I just love the trolls’ look, with pasty skin, pointy ears, tufts of random hair and big liquid eyes surrounded by dark patches like a domino mask, which makes them look like vintage cartoon burglars. They don’t really speak, using a collection of croaks, clicks and squeaks to communicate.

The boxtrolls have gotten a bad rap from the humans after they allegedly pilfered a baby years ago. Archibald Snatcher, a lowlife climber who yearns to wear one of the “White Hats” signifying town leaders, appoints himself chief boxtroll catcher, and sets about exterminating the population.

Snatcher is voiced heroically by Ben Kingsley, in one of the best vocal performances in recent memory. Snatcher chews and growls his words as if they are poison to his mouth – not unlike the fine cheeses favored by the White Hats, which he craves to share despite the fact they make him swell up like a landed jellyfish. And he’s got a buxom alter ego.

He has a trio of henchmen who range in malevolence from reluctant to gleeful – Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and Tracy Morgan do the voices. The nicer pair proclaim themselves the good guys, but worry they’re really evil stooges.

Isaac Hepstead-Wright provides the voice of Eggs, a human boy who was the baby kidnapped by the boxtrolls, though there’s more to it than that. He’s grown up with them and is convinced he is a boxtroll, despite evidence to the contrary. (He insists his ability to use English is a “speech impediment.”)

Eggs finds himself stranded on the city streets topside, where he encounters Winnie Portley-Rind (Elle Fanning), daughter of the local lord (Jared Harris). Willful and obstinate, Winnie is infuriated by her parents’ continual ignoring of what she has to say, particularly with regard to the truth about the boxtrolls.

Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi are animation veterans without a lot of experience in the top seat, but prove to be top-notch visualists and storytellers. Irena Brignull and Adam Pava wrote the screenplay.

My guess is the stop-motion work has been augmented with some computer-generated effects, since there some things – like smoke dissipating from Snatcher’s various steamworks contraptions – that couldn’t be achieved otherwise.

I’m no purist myself – whatever works onscreen, works. This is a movie of dense layers, from the grimy cobblestone streets and buildings to extreme close-ups of the characters, which are incredibly detailed and facially expressive. (And those wonky teeth – so British!)

“The Boxtrolls” is the sort of delightfully inventive family picture that parents might be tempted to indulge in a second viewing – on their own, with the kiddies tucked in at home.

Reeling Backward: "Gandhi" (1982)

"Gandhi" may just be the most resented Best Picture Oscar winner of all time. Which is ironic for a biopic about the iconic advocate of peaceful resistance to oppression. The "little brown man in a loincloth" stole hearts and minds all across the globe, and also the Academy Award from the rightful winner.

At least, that was the standard saw at the time. "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was (then) the top-grossing movie of all time, beloved by American audiences of all ages, made by the Baby Boomers' wunderkind filmmaker, Steven Spielberg. "Gandhi," meanwhile," was very British, very long (3 hours, 11 minutes), and (to many) felt more like a history lesson than a movie.

I don't think I'd seen the film since it came out 32 years ago. Now having watched it again with the improved perspective that comes with the passage of time, I've analyzed my feelings about both movies and come to the considered conclusion that ... "E.T." really did get hosed.

Which isn't to say that "Gandhi" isn't a good film. Actually, it's very good. The acting is splendid, anchored by a then-unknown Ben Kingsley in the title role. It's beautiful to look at and epic in scope, with director Richard Attenborough's camera sweeping across landscapes and seas of people, and then settling in close for intimate moments with Gandhi puttering around his ashram, dispensing wisdom in between spinnings of looms and milkings of goats.

I don't mind lengthy pictures that fill that time with important and engaging events, but you could easily lop a half-hour out of "Gandhi" without losing much of the narrative momentum. For me, the first half is best, as we watch young lawyer Mohandas Gandhi agitating for the rights of Indian immigrants in South Africa, and later returning to his homeland as a middle-aged man and spending a year or two assimilating himself back into his native culture before taking a stand on independence for India.

It's a period of self-discovery, as Gandhi morphs from a standard-issue activist to quasi-holy man.

The second half becomes a bit repetitive, as Gandhi is now a revered international figure and official Great Man. Now going alternately by the names Mahatma ("great soul"), Bapu ("father") or Gandhiji (a familiarization), he ceases to speak to other people as individuals but makes pronouncements for the masses -- even if there is only one other person in the room.

Largely drawn from the real Gandhi's utterances ("an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind"), they nonetheless add to the stilted nature of the film's latter portion.

I was struck by the depiction of Gandhi's reliance on the media to spread his message. It seems he always has an entourage of Western journalists following him around (Martin Sheen and Candice Bergen among them). He cajoles and charms them, extending his friendship -- offers that, at least in the depiction of the movie, reporters are more than happy to turn into an exchange.

There is relatively little depiction of Gandhi's personal life. His four sons are barely seen, and there are essentially two scenes exploring his relationship with his wife, Kasturba (Rohini Hattangadi), whom he married in an arranged ceremony when they were both just 13.

The most notable is when Gandhi first organizes an ashram -- essentially a farming commune -- and insists that everyone share all the work, including cleaning out the latrine. Kasturba objects that this is the work of "untouchables," the lowest caste of Indians relegated to the dregs of society. Gandhi becomes angry and even physically violent with her, but quickly finds his peaceful center.

The primary relationships are with Gandhi's fellow Indian National Congress activists: Pandit Nehru (Roshan Seth), a moderate Hindu who would later become India's first prime minster; Maulana Azad (Virendra Razdan), a younger scholar who doesn't say much; Vallabhbhai Patel (Saeed Jaffrey), an exuberant man of the people; and Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Alyque Padamsee), the peevish and aristocratic chief of India's Muslim faction, who would eventually splinter away from the group and become the founding father of Pakistan.

The best parts of the latter portion of the movie are these men holes up in various rooms, discussing how they will best gain their independence from the British Empire and map out the beginnings of their own country. There's a sense of grandiosity in the moment, but also that these were human beings who could be petty and flawed.

I enjoyed the tight little smile that Kingsley gives Gandhi, who uses it as a sort of imperturbable mask he presented to the world. He employs the same expression both in greeting old friends and in surrendering to the various military or police authorities who come to arrest him from time to time.

Perhaps the most harrowing sequence in the movie is the depiction of the Amritsar massacre, in which British forces fired open a crowd of completely peaceful demonstrators, resulting in more than 1,200 casualties, with something like 370 killed, including women and children.

Edward Fox plays the steely general who ordered his troops to fire for 10 minutes straight into the thickest parts of the crowd as they tried to escape. At the inquest hearing, asked if he would have used machine guns if the armored cars carrying them had been able to fit into the square, he tersely replies, "I think probably, yes."

A great number of actors enjoy small roles in the film, most of them British: Nigel Hawhthorne, Bernard Hill, Richard Griffiths, Trevor Howard, Ian Bannen, John Gielgud, even a very young Daniel Day-Lewis as a South African street punk who threatens Gandhi. John Ratzenberger even turns up as a jeep driver, though I swear his distinctive nasal honk has been dubbed.

"Gandhi" was nominated for 11 Oscars and won eight, including Best Picture, Actor, Director, Original Screenplay (by John Briley) and Original Score.

I don't really begrudge "Gandhi" its Best Picture win all that much. The Academy has a predilection toward certain pedigrees of filmmaking: historical, biographical costume dramas with a sense of profundity and gravitas. (This was part of the reason "12 Years a Slave" was such an easy pick to make earlier this year.) 

"E.T.," for all its wondrous magic, is still seen as a children's picture, and Oscars tend not to go the way of feel-good family pictures (or comedies).

The one Oscar I do think was a serious injustice was Best Costumes, which won over "TRON." Whatever you want to say about the video game adventure, it had a lot of groundbreaking special effects combined with elaborate, vividly original costumes.

For years I had made light of the Gandhi vs. TRON costume donnybrook by saying of the former film, "It was a guy in a white sheet!" Now that I've seen the movie again, I confess that there was much more to the costumes in "Gandhi" than the little man's simple homespun wrap. Gandhi wears natty period suits in the early period, and some of the other notable Indian figures are quite snappy dressers. Nehru, of course, even had a classic mid-century style of suit named after him, faithfully replicated in the film.

Still, I place more value on doing something differently from the way anyone has done it before than executing a familiar thing well. So even upon further reflection, I still think "TRON" got robbed in the costume award.

Actually, this sums up well my feelings about "Gandhi" as a whole. It's overall a pretty marvelous film, but in the end it's a fairly standard "great man" biopic. Perhaps that's why the movie's reputation has waned rather than waxed with the passing of years, and it is mainly remembered only as the film that "E.T." lost to.

 

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.

Video review: "Iron Man 3"

After three outings plus an Avengers tie-in movie, Iron Man is showing his rust.

What once was a fun, zippy roller-coaster ride of a super-hero franchise has quickly devolved into a predictably dark-and-dreary phase. Much like with the last Batman movie, the man behind the mask has grown tired of wearing it, and spends much more time stewing in his personal pit of despair than battling bad guys.

Here Tony Stark is facing confidence problems in the wake of battling aliens, and suffers panic attacks. Robert Downey Jr. still has that rapscallion twinkle in his eye, but he has fewer opportunities to show off his motor-mouth charm.

 Lady love Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is demanding that he give up the whole super-hero shtick. But with a mysterious terrorist named the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) blowing up stuff all over the world, that isn’t about to happen.

New director Shane Black and screenwriter Drew Pearce opt for the buffet approach to storytelling: throw in a little bit of everything, and hope people find something they like. The result is a hot mess of action scenes, male posturing and political plots.

It’s capped off by a ridiculous finale where Stark summons all forty-odd versions of the Iron Man suit to come fight for him, remotely controlled by computer. If he could do that, why didn’t he roll with an entire platoon of automaton Iron Men wherever he went?

“Iron Man 3” isn’t a bad movie, but clearly the red-and-gold avenger has lost much of his luster.
Video features are quite good, though you’ll have to go for the Blu-ray/DVD edition to get the best stuff. The DVD version has only a making-of documentary and a featurette about shooting the Air Force One scene.

Get the combo upgrade and you add a gag reel, deleted and extended scenes, and a feature-length commentary by writer/director Black and co-screenwriter Pearce. You also get a behind-the scenes sneak peek at “Thor: The Dark World” and an all-new short film featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Carter (Hayley Atwell).

Along with a new TV show, another Captain America flick and the inevitable Avengers sequel, Marvel is building a whole super-universe.

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Review: "Iron Man 3"

"Iron Man" was a zippy, giddy take on the superhero genre, with Robert Downey Jr. as our over-caffeinated but charming stewardess on a cinematic zero-g flight into the stratosphere. Then there was "Iron Man 2" because, well, the laws of economics more or less demanded it, even if it offered audiences little more than an obligatory dark-n-dreary phase.

And then came "The Avengers," the harmonic convergence of several comic book movie franchises, proving that sometimes more is more. Unfortunately, it's left Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, with little reason to keep hanging around in his third solo outing.

Downey is back with that rapscallion twinkle in his eye, his nervous tics and motormouth line delivery revealing a man too smart to be comfortably constrained by the mortal limits of his fleshy cocoon. He quotes an anecdote that Albert Einstein only slept three hours a year, and it's clear from Stark's tone that he begrudges even that much time spent away from his gear-happy lair, tinkering away on never-ending improvements to his array of super-suits.

In his own imitable wobbly way, Stark/Downey is the steadying force that keeps the "Iron Man" movies together.

Unfortunately, director Shane Black, who co-wrote the screenplay with Drew Pearce, have come up with a story that's like a buffet line -- they couldn't really decide on a recipe, so they just threw in a little of everything.

Want more snappy banter between Stark and best friend/security wingman Happy (played by Jon Favreau, former director now demoted to sidekick)? It's there, tiredly. And relationship tensions between him and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), his lady love and now head cheese of Stark Industries? Ditto.

There's also some stuff about the after-effects of Stark's battles with critters from outer space in the Avengers flick, leading to one or two full-out panic attacks. It seems the uber-arrogant playboy/inventor/savior of mankind actually has confidence issues.

"Gods? Aliens? I'm a man in a can," he moans.

The world is being threatened by a mastermind terrorist named the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), who dresses like a pasha and speaks like a Mississippi Baptist preacher while setting off mysterious bombs that leave no trace of their mechanical origin. He being a movie villain, Mandarin has to do this live on TV, hacking every station in the country at once, simultaneously.

Worse yet, the Mandarin apparently has all these strange henchmen who sort of glow red from the inside, can make things extremely hot by touching them and heal amazingly fast.

A few new characters float around the edges. There's Maya (Rebecca Hall), a botanist and former Stark fling who's found a way to "hack the operating system of a creature's DNA," or something. And Aldrich Killian, who we see in a 1999 flashback looking homely and walking with a crutch, who later turns up as handsome as Guy Pearce.

Don Cheadle returns as Jim Rhodes, who wears an older version of Stark's suite and serves the U.S. government as War Machine ... wait, check that, they redub him Iron Patriot after the name tests better with focus groups.

There are a few exciting action sequences, but the overall effect is more discombobulating than exhilarating. Stark jumps from situation to situation, and -- thanks to some new technology -- from suit to suit so quickly, it never really feels like there are real consequences to the mayhem.

Late in the game, Stark narrates a lament about how many geniuses start out with great intentions, but then compromises and complications bring down their best efforts. It's an apt metaphor for super-hero movies, which start out with a cool premise and M.O. Then as time goes by, the mythology gets junked up with tertiary characters and subplots.

Maybe that's why in the comic book world, every so often they reboot a character by returning him or her to their roots, which are reimagined for a fresh start. With "Iron Man 3," they've taken this hardware as far as it can go.

Review: "The Dictator"

It goes almost without saying that "The Dictator" is not as funny as "Borat" or "Brüno," Sacha Baron Cohen's two other comedies about crude foreigners who come to American shores and haplessly inflict their outrageous behavior on the natives. Really, no other outcome was possible.

"Borat" had a fresh, vibrant feel coupled with a mad hatter's sense of spontaneity. (It actually received an Oscar nomination for best screenplay, which I do not take issue with beyond questioning how much of anything was written down before they started filming.) "Brüno," if not nearly as consistent, cleverly uncovered some uglier parts of pop culture.

But the big difference those two movies had from this new film is that they were, at least ostensibly, mockumentaies. That is to say, most of the people reacting to Baron Cohen's antics were regular rubes trotted in as unwitting victims.

The joke was not Brüno or Borat acting out, but the reaction it provoked .

"The Dictator" is fundamentally different in that it's a scripted comedy in which everyone is an actor hired to play a role. Instead, their reactions to General Aladeen, the despotic ruler of the fictional Middle Eastern country of Wadiya, are preordained. And that just drains all the juice out of the movie.

In large part, that's due to the fact that the supporting cast doesn't really have any reaction. Aladeen will say or do something incredibly racist, or sexist, or some other -ist, and the people just sort of stare at him quizzically like they're addled.

No one personifies this better than Zoey, Aladeen's would-be American love interest. A crunchy, Birkenstock-wearing "sustainable Earth" type, Zoey (Anna Faris) is absolutely appalled when all that hatred comes tumbling out of Aladeen's mouth, wrapped into a twisted braid of bent vowels that's supposed to represent a Wadiyan accent. But other than a couple of mild admonishments, she never tells him where to go.

Director Larry Charles and Baron Cohen, who co-wrote the screenplay with three others, don't attempt much in the way of plot. Aladeen comes to America after the United Nations threatens action over his country's development of nuclear weapons, and somehow he gets switched out with his simple-minded sheepherder of a body double.

Tamir (Ben Kingsley), Aladeen's ambitious right-hand man, sees an opportunity to install a puppet and run the show himself. Curiously, Tamir's big plan is to turn Wadiya into a democracy so he can start selling his country's vast oil wealth on the international market.

As evil schemes go, it's a pretty benign one.

I won't deny there are some good laughs in "The Dictator." I counted three that actually got me guffawing loudly, and perhaps a half-dozen others that evinced a smile and a chuckle.

But there are also many long, dull stretches where not much is going on. Despite the movie's skimpy 83-minute run time, it often seemed to drag itself out unnecessarily.

The interesting question is where Sacha Baron Cohen's career goes from here. He's too famous now to pass himself off for goofs, and clearly his model of humor isn't geared toward scripted fare. Based on "The Dictator," I'd say his reign of funny has come to an end.

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "Hugo"

"Hugo" is an often-delightful movie that always kept me guessing. It's got a lot of Charles Dickens mixed with a little steampunk fantasy, layered with a rich frosting of tribute to early 20th century silent filmmaking.

In a world where most movies seem to make the entirety of themselves obvious the moment they begin, it was a pleasurable experience to have a film that took its time establishing itself. There doesn't seem to be much of a coherent story for a great deal of the time, just a sprawling group of characters who don't appear to be behaving for the camera. Slowly, though, themes and urgencies coalesce.

This is perhaps the most uncharacteristic movie Martin Scorsese has made, and not just because it's a children's movie, and contains tons of CGI and was shot in 3-D, no less. For once, the 3-D is not just an add-on to pump up ticket grosses, but actually enhances the cinematic experience by adding layers and textures without spotlighting them for their own sake.

The visuals are gorgeous and lush, almost painterly in their evocation of 1930s Paris in winter. The gently twinkling lights, the crisp white snow, the people who dress up in suits and gowns for a simple trip to the train station -- it's a feast for the eyes.

No, this is a departure for Scorsese because he's not exploring his usual theme, the human savagery hidden by urban society. He has made a paean to the dreamers, magicians and tinkerers who strive to reshape their world into something beautiful. This is a story of hope and striving, not sorrow and loss.

Asa Butterfield (who starred in the criminally unappreciated "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas") plays Hugo Cabret, an orphan boy who lives inside the clocks and mechanical guts of the Paris train depot. His uncle, the timekeeper, has long ago disappeared in a drunken fling, and Hugo's clockmaker father died. So he's tragically, achingly alone.

Hugo peers through the clock faces and steam grates at the denizens of the train station, with two figures holding most of his attention. One is the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen, chewing his vowels), an unctuous man with a bad leg supported by a squeaky metal brace, whose specialty is snatching up lost children and shipping them off to the orphanage.

The other is the owner of the toy shop (Ben Kingsley), from whom Hugo has quietly been stealing parts for his own special project. Hugo and his father began repairing a strange automaton, a little metal man who sits at a writing desk. Hugo has become obsessed with getting this creation working again to see what secrets it holds.

I can't say anything more about the plot for fear of spoiling the film's charms. Suffice it to say the toymaker's goddaughter Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) will factor in heavily, plus the local flower girl (Emily Mortimer), an ancient bookshop owner (Christopher Lee), and the movies of the great silent filmmaker, Georges Méliès.

As much as I admired "Hugo," I could not give myself over entirely to it. The movie's emotional connections are tenuous -- Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan, working from Brian Selznick's book, never let things get too dark and dreary. Even the villainous station inspector, presented as a buffoon, is allowed  redemptive love interest. And the toymaker's bile over his shattered dreams washes away a little too quickly and conveniently.

I also noticed a disturbing artificiality to Moretz' performance -- little gestures and facial expressions that seemed overly theatrical and less than spontaneous. She's been terrific in everything else I've seen her in ("Let Me In," "Kick-Ass"), so I can only fault Scorsese's direction of her.

"Hugo" is gorgeous movie-making that, in end, feels mostly like an homage to itself.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Shutter Island"

"Shutter Island" is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, accompanied by a relentlessly over-the-top musical score. We know from the get-go that the movie is playing mind games with us, and we don't need to have read the novel by Dennis Lehane to figure out pretty early on what the end game will be.

It's never a good thing when an audience knows where a story is going, and waits around for the film to catch up. Director Martin Scorsese and his cast pile on the atmospherics, the 1950s clothes and cars, so at least the waiting room is pleasant to look at.

Leonardo DiCaprio, in his third outing with Scorsese, plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashcliff, a prison for the criminally insane on a forbidding island in Boston Harbor.

Teddy's got a new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), with whom he quickly forms a hard-boiled bond. But nothing on the island is what it seems. Like an endless ball of yarn, the more of the mystery Chuck and Teddy unspool, the more confusing things continue to get.

They suspect the doctors are performing heartless experiments on the mentally ill. The prim head doctor (Ben Kingsley), is less than forthcoming with personnel files, and the patients have clearly been coached in their answers.

The music is omnipresent in the film, to the point of becoming comedic. When Chuck and Teddy first arrive at the facility's steel-and-brick compound, the score reaches an incredible volume of surging minor chords. They say film scores should be felt but not heard; this one not only intrudes into the foreground, it wants to be the life of the party.

"Shutter Island" feels like an exercise in mood manipulation. The film doesn't draw its audience in, but treats them like something to be experimented upon.

Video extras are rather measly -- the DVD version comes with nada.

Even the Blu-ray boasts only two bonus features: "Beyond the Shutters," a standard making-of documentary, and "Into the Lighthouse," a discussion of 1950s-era psychiatric therapies.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "Shutter Island"

"Shutter Island" is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, accompanied by a relentlessly over-the-top musical score. We know from the get-go that the movie is playing mind games with us, and we don't need to have read the novel by Dennis Lehane to figure out pretty early on what the end game will be.

It's never a good thing when an audience knows where a story is going, and waits around for the film to catch up. Director Martin Scorsese and his cast pile on the atmospherics, the 1950s clothes and cars, so at least the waiting room is pleasant to look at.

Early in my career, I eschewed talking with other people who had seen the movie I'd just watched, worried about inadvertently plagiarizing. Lately I've taken to exchanging views with my fellow Indianapolis critics after a screening. We all know each other, so nobody's offended when there are disagreements. If someone says something brilliant, the others are polite enough to let him/her keep it without copycatting.

After "Shutter Island," a half-dozen of us sat around looking at each other, struggling to come up with anything to say. No one seemed blown away by the movie. Nobody really hated it, either. Joe Shearer enumerated some continuity errors that others had also noted but I hadn't, suggesting it was a deliberate attempt to comment on the characters' fractured state of mind.

About the only thing we all agreed on was that this is the sort of movie that requires several viewings to fully digest.

Leonardo DiCaprio, in his third outing with Scorsese, plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashcliff, a prison for the criminally insane on a forbidding island in Boston Harbor. The facility, nicknamed Shutter Island, is brimming with beefy security guards toting high-powered rifles, who eye Daniels warily as he disembarks from the ferry -- the only way on or off the island.

Teddy's got a new partner, Chuck, played by Mark Ruffalo. They quickly form a hard-boiled detective trust, although it's clear Teddy isn't telling Chuck everything. Over time, we get a few tidbits: An arsonist named Laeddis (Elias Koteas) who burned down an apartment building, killing Teddy's wife Dolores (Michelle Williams), is secretly being held at Ashcliff. In response to Chuck's worried looks, Teddy promises he's not there to kill Laeddis.

The facility is run by a prim doctor, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), who is less than forthcoming with personnel files and other information necessary for the marshals' investigation. The staff is squirrely, and the patients have obviously been coached in their answers. The warden (Ted Levine) seems ready to engage Teddy in mortal combat at the drop of a hat.

Topping things off, one of the doctors appears to be an ex-Nazi -- which doesn't sit well with Teddy, who as a soldier helped liberate Dachau and saw first-hand the brutality there. (The doc is played by Max von Sydow, I guess with the notion that American audiences can't tell the difference between Swedish and German accents.)

Like an endless ball of yarn, the more of the mystery Teddy and Chuck unspool, the more confusing things continue to get. They suspect the doctors are performing heartless experiments on the mentally ill. A former patient, George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley), who after his release tipped Teddy off about the goings-on at Ashcliff, turns up in one of the dungeons, beaten to a pulp. Teddy's migraines, usually accompanied by visions of Dolores warning him about dangers ahead, grow more frequent.

I can't give away more, but by this point most audience members will have figured things out for themselves.

The music is omnipresent in the film, to the point of becoming comedic. When Chuck and Teddy first arrive at the facility's steel-and-brick compound, the score reaches an incredible volume of surging minor chords. I'm guessing Scorsese and music supervisor Robbie Robertson were going for something, but I confess I don't know what it is. They say film scores should be felt but not heard; this one not only intrudes into the foreground, it wants to be the life of the party.

"Shutter Island" is an expertly-made movie that left me at times exasperated, but occasionally intrigued. It feels like an exercise in mood manipulation, with the entire plot operating as a MacGuffin to set up scenes of squirm-inducing paranoia. This film doesn't draw its audience in, but treats them like something to be experimented upon.

2.5 stars