Video review: "The Addams Family"

File “The Addams Family” under “Reboots We Didn’t Need, But Aren’t Terrible.” At least they’re going in the opposite direction as Disney, which seems determined to do a live-action remake of every animated hit they’ve ever had -- even the crappy ones. (*Cough* *cough* “Mulan” *cough* *cough*.)

Here the 1990s comedies starring Raul Julia (may he rest in pieces) and Anjelica Huston, preceded by the 1960s television show, are revived as a kiddie cartoon flick.

It’s a good fit, since the premise is as cartoonish as it gets. A family of death-loving weirdos take up residence in the mansion on the hill, creeping out the neighbors with their 24/7/365 celebration of Halloween-esque themes.

Gomez (Oscar Isaac) is the smooth patriarch, though we get the sense his wife, austere Morticia (Charlize Theron), really runs the show. Son Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) is an awkward people-pleaser, while dour daughter Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) has a studied, detached air to her. Nick Kroll does the voice of bald, super-creepy Uncle Fester.

It’s a nice voice cast, though Moretz stands out for her slightly formal line readings. I chuckled every time Wednesday spoke.

The plot is some contrived claptrap about getting the entire Addams clan to gather from all over the globe for Pugsley’s coming-of-age ceremony. (Which involves deadly sharp sabers, of course.) Allison Janney provides the voice of their nemesis, television home improvement host Margaux, marshaling the forces of shiplap and bright hues.

There’s a lot of emphasis on boingy action and throwaway jokes, some of which work and some that deserved to be thrown away.

I mildly enjoyed “The Addams Family,” though my kids loved it and yours probably will, too -- unless they’re weirdos who like ponies and rainbows and life-affirming stories.

It’s coming out with some nice bonus features. My favorite is “Charades with Thing,” an interactive game in which the bodyless hand invites you to guess what he’s miming. There are also deleted and extended scenes, a storyboard-to-final evolution of a scene, a rogues gallery of character profiles featuring each voice actor, two music videos and a throwback feature to the previous film and TV versions.

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Review: "Bombshell"

If “Bombshell” looks like a bunch of Hollywood liberals teaming up for a vicious takedown of Fox News, the hated epitome of right-wing media, that’s because it is.

That doesn’t make it any less delicious or entertaining. And it’s as good a cinematic exploration aw I’ve seen of how sexual harassment is tolerated and even condoned.

Director Jay Roach’s last two films were a hagiography of lefty screenwriting icon Dalton Trumbo and a send-up of Republican congressional candidates. Screenwriter Charles Randolph won (deservedly) an Oscar for writing “The Big Short,” an angry and hilarious look at the housing lending crisis that set off the Great Recession.

They’re core members of the Liberal Hollywood Elite©.

And yet, “Bombshell” possesses layers and subtleties. It treats its characters as living, flesh-and-blood creatures full of complexities and contradictions. You may even be shocked to hear some of the Fox News women come out looking brave, even a little heroic.

You may have seen that freaky trailer where Margot Robbie, playing an ambitious up-and-comer at the network, is riding in an elevator. Then in walk Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson. They warily study each other through sidelong glances, the tension palpable, and you wonder how the hell the studio convinced Kelly and Carlson to portray themselves.

Except they didn’t. Kelly is played by Charlie Theron, and Carlson by Nicole Kidman. I’m not sure what kind of makeup or even possibly CGI effects were employed, but they look so much like the women they portray you’d swear there was some DNA swapping.

The voices are really good, too. Theron sounds so much like Kelly, with her upstate New York accent and odd word emphasis, it’s downright eerie. Kidman is great, too, though Carlson doesn’t have as distinct a speaking style to emulate.

These are showstopper performances that I’m sure will be remembered during the awards season.

The story follows along in 2016 during the last months of the tenure of Roger Ailes, the notorious political fixer-turned-news-mogul who ran Fox News from its inception. He’s played by John Lithgow in a naturalistic fat suit and facial prosthetics. You’d never call it a sympathetic portrait, but Lithgow manages to find the humanity inside the ogreish exterior.

Ailes believed in giving the audience what it wants, or at least what he’s convinced they wanted, which was right-wing opinion segments, short skirts and lots of yelling. He helped create Donald Trump as a viable candidate and then found himself tied to his yoke, as have so many others.

Robbie’s character, Kayla, is an amalgam of women used and abused by Ailes and a corporate culture that openly treated its on-air talent as sex objects. She begs Ailes for advice to launch her career, and they share a scene of pressure and submission that’s just devastating to watch.

Kate McKinnon plays Jess, a producer who befriends Kayla and has a brief romance with her. Jess is a liberal lesbian who hides her identity because she couldn’t get a job anywhere else but Fox News, and now no other network will hire her.

An excellent supporting cast includes Allison Janney, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Rob Delaney, Malcolm McDowell, Stephen Root and Liv Hewson.

The best part of the film is the middle section, where the word is out about Ailes’ disgusting behavior and the lawyers are circling. Rather than the walls closing in, the newsroom breaks down into a cheerleading squad led by Jeanine Pirro and a few others, handing out “Team Roger” T-shirts and insisting people wear them.

The #MeToo movement has sparked a lot of good things and also some predictable overreaching and backlash. This is basically the first mainstream movie to deal with the issue head-on, and it’s both chilling and exhilarating.

Many of us who haven’t been affected sit in our privileged perches and wonder how anyone could commit this kind of behavior, or why anyone puts up with it. “Bombshell” is a bravura portrait of how ambition, fear, lust and hypocrisy can combine in the most awful ways imaginable so that people feel trapped.

Review: "The Addams Family"

“The Addams Family” was a great concept for a TV show, with such vivid, off-kilter characters, but I can’t recall a single episode if pressed.

It was a one-joke show, and later one-joke live-action movies: the Addamses are death-obsessed freaks and monsters who love darkness and decay. They’re the mirrored opposite of the standard American family, openly trying to kill each other instead of pretending to adore one another.

They’re a Halloween clan. Instead of embracing creepy stuff one night a year, they live it 24/7.

The two Barry Sonnenfeld pictures were a hit, but after Raul Julia (as patriarch Gomez Addams) died young no one wanted to continue the franchise. Anjelica Huston (un-maternal Morticia), Christini Ricci (dour daughter Wednesday) and Christopher Lloyd (the other one) as ultra-creepy Uncle Fester all milked good roles.

A quarter-century later the Addams are back as an animated movie with voices by Oscar Isaac, Charlie Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz and Nick Kroll (respective to how they’re listed above).

It pretty much hits all the notes you expect: familiar reprises of the main characters with a few noticeable twists; amped-up action scenes courtesy of the endless possibilities that come with computer animation; and some rote life lessons about the importance of family... even a murderous one.

We get a little of the family backstory, which sounds astonishingly similar to the "Hotel Transylvania" flicks: the monstrous clan was chased out of its ancestral home by torch-bearing villagers and set up shop in a lonely cliffside mansion in the worse place possible: New Jersey.

Cut to 13 years later, and they've never stepped outside the grounds of their haunted house, formerly an asylum, which comes complete with an evil spirit constantly moaning "Get out!" and trying to sever fingers with slamming windows or whatnot.

First son Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) is preparing for his ritual passage into manhood, known as a Mazurka -- think bar mitzvah but with deadly saber dance moves. Gomez is fearful that his offspring just doesn't have the family goods.

Meanwhile, Wednesday yearns to find out what's beyond their fence, and discovers that an entire town has sprung up in the valley below. A blowhard home-improvement TV maven named Margaux (Allison Janney) runs the show there, a pink-and-green wonderland of tackiness that's borrowed straight out of "Edward Scissorhands."

Wednesday decides to attend the junior high school in the city, called "Assimilation," in case anything's too subtle for ya. She befriends Margaux's daughter, Parker (Elsie Fisher). The two become friends and join in a rebellion going in opposite directions, with Parker adopting a goth look and Wednesday adding unicorns and color splashes to her family's signature B&W shtick.

"Everyone knows pink is a gateway color," Morticia frets.

Moretz is terrific as Wednesday, giving her just the right lilt and formality in her inflections to always render her lines funny. Theron is good too as Morticia, who has no visible feet and floats around in a skinny black dress that hides spiders and other creepy-crawlies.

I noticed most of the men are drawn with thick, chocky bodies while the women usually have cartoonish spindly limbs and torsos. The opening sequence shows Mortician literally bolting and screwing herself into her gown, and I wish the filmmakers had thought about this stuff beforehand.

Thing is here, the body-less hand bounding about in a helpful way. In this iteration he actually has a small eye at the wrist, which is either a new thing or something I'd never noticed before. In one of the film's funnier throwaway bits, we learn that Thing has something of a foot fetish, which kind of makes sense when you think about it.

Giant butler Lurch (Conrad Vernon, also one of the directors) groans and serves, though he's got a bit of an eye-roll thing and has some decidedly fancy side interests. Cousin It (Snoop Dogg) shows up pretty late in the game, big pimpin' in a Cadillac and still indecipherable under all that hair.

"The Addams Family" was directed by Vernon and Greg Tiernan, who made the much-overrated "Sausage Party" together, from a screenplay by Matt Lieberman. My kids enjoyed it well enough, but it's cookie-cutter disposable entertainment that tries just hard enough.

Video review: "Long Shot"

Let’s get this out of the way first: no, in real life women who look like Charlize Theron do not fall for guys who look like Seth Rogen. Unless, of course, they actually are Seth Rogen.

Well, I guess Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley were a real thing. But let’s stipulate that outside of showbiz -- where outsized talent, wealth and fame tend to kick the usual laws of attractiveness out  the window -- these sort of pairings do not naturally occur.

But that’s the main dynamic of “Long Shot,” in which a nobody loser falls for an incredibly ambitious and beautiful woman, and she somehow returns his affection. In fact, she’s not just your workaday looker; Charlotte Field is actually the U.S. Secretary of State and running for the big job: POTUS.

Rogen plays Fred Flarsky, a high-minded but bottom-feeding journalist who finds himself out of work and running into Charlotte, who babysat for him back when they were teens. He had it bad for her, and it doesn’t take much to rekindle his desire. She offers him a job as speechwriter, he accepts, and they start jet-setting around the world, reconnecting and love blooming.

Director Jonathan Levine and screenwriters Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah pepper the background with interesting supporting characters.

Bob Odenkirk play the current president, a former TV actor who sees the White House as a springboard to features films. Andy Serkis is a nasty media mogul who sees a strong independent contender as a personal affront. And O’Shea Jackson is Fred’s best friend, a successful entrepreneur who offers some unexpected insight.

There are some goofy aspects to “Long Shot,” but I was surprised that the beauty-and-the-geek pairing is actually the best thing about it.

Bonus features consist entirely of 11 documentary featurettes. They are:

• “All’s Fair in Love & Politics: Making Long Shot”
• “Seven Minutes in Heaven: Seth + Charlize Uncensored”
• “Secret Weapons”
• “Epic Flarsky Falls”
• “Prime Minister Steward O-Rama”
• “Hanging with Boyz II Men”
• “Just Kinda Crushing It!”
• “The First Mister: A Portrait”
• “An Imperfect Union”
• “Love & Politics”
• “Friends Like These”

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Review: "Long Shot"

I’m not quite sure if the title of “Long Shot” refers to the woman running for president of the United States or the dweeby guy who becomes her speechwriter and falls for her. Given they are played by world-class beauty Charlize Theron and frumpy beta male extraordinaire Seth Rogen, respectively, I’m inclined to think it’s the latter.

Hollywood: the only place where guys who look like they were plucked straight out of a video game tournament get supermodels to fall for them.

Once, just once, I’d like to see a mainstream movie where a regular-looking guy is ensorcelled by a regular-looking woman, or vice-versa. But this is showbiz, and we like to look at pretty people.

There are a lot of things that don’t work in this movie, but surprisingly the Theron-Rogen pairing is not one of them. It’s a sweet and awkward dance, about two very busy but lonely people, and in the end we believe she really could fall in love with him.

(The other way is a given.)

Mostly this is due to a very strong and subtle performance by Theron, who shows us layers of emotion, ambivalence and calculation we don’t usually see in the romantic comedy game.

Also, he is hitting at only about 60% of Full Rogenness, which turns out to be the perfect dose of his neurotic/obnoxious shtick.

He plays Fred Flarsky, a crusading journalist at the Brooklyn Advocate who has built a reputation for spit-flecked invectives against those he sees as evildoers. As the story opens he is infiltrating a Nazi sect (Brooklyn Nazis?) and goes so far as to agree to a swastika tattoo to prove his bona fides.

Theron plays Charlotte Field, Secretary of State serving under an idiot president (Bob Odenkirk) whose only preparation for the role of POTUS was playing one on TV. But now he’s decided not to run for reelection in favor of something “more prestigious” – feature films – and offers to endorse Charlotte for her own run.

She and Fred run into each other at a posh party Fred’s best friend (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) invites him to as a cheer-up after losing his job. Turns out Charlotte babysat for Fred when they were teens, and there was an early and embarrassing, uh, indication of his desire for her -- the pudgy D&D bookworm pining after the student council president wannabe.

The political flacks tell Charlotte she isn’t funny enough, so she brings Fred on as a punch-up writer who travels with her around the club promoting a major environmental initiative she wants to use as a springboard for her presidential announcement.

Bearded, wearing the same type of rainbow-hued tracksuit he did as a kid, carrying a copious amount of drugs at all times, Fred stands out like a sore thumb on the international stage. But as they spend time together, they find the old attraction still burns.

Soon she’s teaching how to be a real grownup, and he’s helping her find her inner kid. One sequence, where they drop drugs and dance till dawn, ineptly plays national security issues for a goof.

In the black column is the film’s ability to hold up a funhouse mirror to our current political environment. Like any good satirist knows, it’s better to wield a scalpel than an ax.

Rather than being a blowhard Trump clone, Odenkirk’s prez is a self-deluded hack. Similarly, Andy Serkis (barely recognizable behind a Steve Bannon-esque wig and facial prosthesis) is a stand-in for a Roger Ailes type as the conniving head of the Wembley global media conglomerate.

Several cutaways of a Fox News-like morning talk show, replete with sniggering goombahs tossing around sexist jokes, are just devastating.

But the movie also has a surprising moment I didn’t expect where Fred gets an eye-opening reveal about his own biases and intolerance.

Director Jonathan Levine and screenwriters Liz Hannah and Dan Sterling wisely stay away from getting too deep into the political weeds. This is reflected by one of Charlotte’s political image consultants on their strategy to stress her glamour rather than her plans: “We don’t drill down too deep on policy, and that’s because our research finds people don’t care.”

Witty, funny, occasionally gross, “Long Shot” is that rarest of cinematic animals: a political romantic comedy with a fuzzy, warm center.

Review: "Tully"

Director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody broke out together with the release of “Juno” 11 years ago, establishing themselves as important filmmakers while still in their 20s. Their follow-up together, 2011’s “Young Adult,” starring Charlize Theron as a woman stuck on life’s launching pad, disappointed.

Since then, their careers have fluttered in fading notoriety, with Reitman’s “Labor Day” becoming a cinematic laughing stock -- unfairly, imho -- while Cody has largely moved to television (which isn’t the big step down it used to be).

They’re back for a third time, again with Theron, for “Tully.” I don’t know if it will revive their names as A-list filmmakers, but it’s a smart and sensitive portrait of the trials of motherhood, along with a few developments we don’t see coming.

It’s a brave and unexpected movie, and Theron is magnificent in another career-turning role.

After getting lean and spare to play a one-armed warrior in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Theron reportedly gained 50 pounds to portray Marlo, a woman of about age 40 who is giving birth to her third (unplanned) child. At first I thought it was very convincing prosthetics, but the former model went all the way to personify a very convincing postpartum body.

At one point, a completely frazzled Marlo has a drink spilled on her while eating dinner with the children, as her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), returns from another of many business trips. Completely at the end of her rope, she nonchalantly strips off the sopping shirt to reveal a mammoth maternity bra and mottled belly.

“Mommy, what’s wrong with your body?” her oldest, Sarah (Lia Frankland), asks in the sweetest tone.

In addition to the baby, Marlo also struggles with her kindergartner, Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), who has serious anxiety issues that cause him to be a disruption at school, and everywhere. The fact he’s undiagnosed, but universally described as “quirky,” only heightens the challenge.

Marlo and Drew have a typical three-kids relationship: someone’s always coming or going, they’re always running late and marital intimacy has been moved to the back burner, and then off the burner to the counter, and then put away in the fridge. Drew seems like a decent guy, but he works all the time, and when he’s home he’s helping with the kids or playing video games.

The primary relationship in the story is between Marlo and Tully, the young “night nanny” who has been hired by Marlo’s wealthy brother (Mark Duplass) as a baby shower gift. This is a person who takes care of the baby so mom and dad can sleep.

(Well, let’s face it, dads: so mom can sleep.)

Tully, played by Mackenzie Davis, is energetic and earnest, endlessly helpful and supportive. She not only watches the baby, she cleans up the house and bakes cupcakes, too. And she initiates a friendship with Marlo that allows the mom to perk up out of her litany of exhaustion and underappreciation.

There’s a lot of bright humor in the film, courtesy of Cody. I loved this exchange in which the two women discuss Marlo’s pre-marriage sex life:

“I rode every horse on the merry-go-round.”
“So which horse is Drew?”
“Drew is… the bench.”

I don’t want to give away too much, but suffice it to say the new friendship proceeds in surprising ways. Marlo struggles with the monotony of parenthood, but Tully advises her that kids need their moms to be “dull and constant.”

I have a number of married friends who have chosen not to have children. “Tully” is the sort of movie that would only validate their decisions, as it depicts parenthood in all its horrible, depressing, exhilarating glory. The truth is Furioso may have been tougher than Mad Max, but someone like Marlo is more than their match.
 

Review: "Gringo"

"Gringo" is a strange movie, and a hard one to review. I didn't particularly like it. Didn't particularly hate it, either. If there's a cinematic equivalent of eating a sustaining meal without ever really tasting your food, this is it.

I think it was going for a mix of comedy, action and intrigue, perhaps along the lines of "Midnight Run." Certainly, it did not achieve this.

The most notable thing about the movie is how forgettable it is... quite literally. I saw the film last night, got busy with other things, and forgot that I had to write this review.

Charlize Theron is pretty much the only thing interesting or compelling about it. She plays Elaine Markinson, the co-president of a shady pharmaceutical company that is developing a pill that copies the psychotropic effects of marijuana, while also playing footsie with the Mexican cartel on the side. There's a scene where they pitch the drug to an even bigger company, talking about how rapidly marijuana is becoming legalized.

I kept waiting for someone to ask why if pot is heading toward universal legality, anyone needs to buy a pill that simulates it?

Anyway, Elaine is a real piece of work, a land shark with absolutely no regard for others. Swims, eats, and f*cks, baby.

There's a pivotal scene where she berates herself for momentarily showing signs of basic humanity, which she interprets as weakness. A former beauty queen who enthusiastically wields sex as a weapon, Elaine divides the world into winners, and everybody else. "Guilt is for losers" is her mantra.

Her partner is Richard Rusk (Joel Edgerton), her gender opposite but spiritual mirror, so there's no surprise the two are carrying on an affair. Though the word "affair" connotes some sort of emotional connection, of which neither is capable. Richard is the type of guy who, when he's thirsty, doesn't bother asking his secretary to fetch him something, simply bellowing into the intercom, "I'm thirsty."

The ostensible main character is Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo), a Nigerian immigrant who has discovered the American Dream isn't what it's cracked up to be. Married to a spendthrift (Thandie Newton, utterly wasted) who has driven them deep into debt, Harold is the quintessential white knight, a guy who believes that those who do good will find it returned to them.

Harold believes Richard is his friend, who gave him a job out of kindness. He couldn't be more wrong.

The running joke is that everybody in the movie is on some level out to get Harold. He's the patsy, the pushover, the naïf, the guy who's kept in the dark until it's time to pin something on him. Even one character, who shows up rather late in the game and whose mission is to save Harold, ends up trying to turn the screws to his advantage.

Harold has been making regular trips down to Mexico to oversee the company's operation there. Some inventory has turned up missing, which concerns him. He's also heard the company, Prometheon, may be swallowed up by a much larger competitor and he'll likely be out of work. Still, he soldiers on, doing good by everyone he interacts with -- even bringing Chicago barbecue to their head of security south of the border (Yul Vazquez).

What he doesn't know is Richard and Elaine have been secretly selling part of their stock to a Mexican drug lord. On the latest trip down south, things go awry, some blood is spilled and Harold is made wise to all those who have betrayed him.

Finally growing some moxie, Harold remembers the company has a kidnapping insurance policy for their executives, and hatches a scheme to blackmail them for $5 million. But it turns out Harold is worth more to them dead than a live, and soon it's all chase-chase and bang-bang.

Sitting on the sidelines of the story, without ever really providing a clear view of their role in it, are Amanda Seyfried and Harry Treadaway as Sunny and Miles, American tourists who have an ulterior purpose for their trip to Mexico.

Sharlto Copley turns up as a mercenary hired to rescue, then kill, Harold. He's recently had a change of heart and vocation in his own life, but we'll see if his newly kinder, gentler instincts will prevail.

Directed by Nash Edgerton (Joel's brother) from a script by Matthew Stone and Anthony Tambakis, "Gringo" is the sort of cinematic fodder that arrives in between behemoth releases, and is quickly crushed and forgotten. And probably deserves to be.

Review: "Atomic Blonde"

Look, I see a daggone lot of movies -- 200 a year, I reckon -- so it’s pretty hard to impress me. I’m the guy who yawns at a 20-second piece of CGI that cost $5 million and took a team of computer animators six months to create. But there were parts of “Atomic Blonde” where I had to scoop my jaw off the sticky floor of the theater.

Essentially the first imitator in the “John Wick” mold, this spy action/thriller combines unbelievable kick-butt stunt sequences with a whole lot of intrigue and double crosses. Charlize Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a British MI6 agent sent into the rat’s nest of Berlin on the eve of the Wall coming down in 1989.

The plot is a largely forgettable dance through the usual spy movie tropes: enemies, allies, those lying somewhere in between, all sides playing the long game of leverage, with the threat of a double agent and a MacGuffin-esque “list” that could bring the whole order tumbling down.

What sets “Blonde” apart are the in-your-face stunts. Director David Leitch is a rookie behind the camera but a veteran stunt coordinator -- much the same as "Wick" -- and he shows an audacious verve that kicks the usual hand-to-hand combat scenes to the next level.

The high point is a sequence on a flight of stairs that segues from one group of opponents to the next, with the camera following Broughton every step of the way. She gets thrown down a flight, the camera tumbles right along with her. And Leitch uses minimal cutting, so we get to see the whole thing play out from beginning to end, as the combatants grow battered and exhausted.

Theron proves an able physical presence, completely believable as someone who could take on her all-male gallery of adversaries. She also brings subtle acting chops to the connective scenes, lending Broughton a haunted quality -- a deceiver and killer who flings herself into the life she’s chosen, but doesn’t enjoy it.

James McAvoy plays David Percival, a fellow Brit agent who acts as her sneering host, helper and foil. He’s been stationed in East Berlin for a decade, carving out an identity as a black market dealer in Western goods and information. Percival knows everyone, has all the angles covered, is familiar with the back ways and hidden passages. What’s unclear is where his true loyalties lie.

Based on the graphic novel, “The Coldest City” by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart, the screenplay by Kurt Johnstad (“300”) is long on too-cool mood and punk imagery. What people say isn’t nearly as important as how and why they are saying it.

It seems a Soviet intelligence agent code-named Spyglass (Eddie Marsan) is ready to defect, and is dangling a list that contains the identities of every known spy of every nationality. Everyone is desperate to get their hands on it, so the orders are “trust no one.”

Sofia Boutella plays a mysterious French woman tagging along everywhere, whose importance will grow. Roland Møller is Bremovych, the local Russian chief, who has hands in every pot. Bill Skarsgård plays a helpful young proto-computer geek, and Daniel Bernhardt is memorable as a local tough who goes toe-to-toe with our heroine in a couple of brutal blond vs. blonde matchups.

The film is told through the framing device of a debriefing interview back in West Berlin, where Broughton has turned up beaten to a pulp, her mission failed. Toby Jones and John Goodman play English and American spooks, respectively, giving her the business and trying to interrogate some straight answers out of her.

Theron works the poker face, letting her mask slip but once.

Sexy, smart and seriously high-energy, “Atomic Blonde” is like James Bond mixed up with steampunk fantasy and a heavy dollop of feminism. John Wick, meet your match.

Review: "The Fate of the Furious"

As we already knew from the movies, you can outrun an explosion, provided it happens in slo-mo. Now from “The Fate of the Furious,” the franchise that started out about illegal street racers and somehow morphed into full James Bond-esque international intrigue and action set pieces, we learn you can block an explosion simply by parking a car in front of it.

It’s true -- the flames won’t go above, below or around the vehicle at all! Thanks, Furious!

I know, I know; nitpicking the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, now in its astonishing eighth iteration, is like criticizing the dancing bear’s form. People pay to see it because it does what it does, not because it’s particularly good at it or whether the whole enterprise makes a lick of sense.

The thing is, people got hooked on these movies because they combined hot rods, bulging muscles, macho preening, hoochie mamas and lots of hard-throttle racing. Most of that has gone by the wayside in “Fate.” Oh, there are a few cool cars, and neither Vin Diesel nor Dwayne Johnson seem to own any shirts that include sleeves.

But at this point the Furious movies are big, messy, sprawling orgies of pomposity and ridiculousness. It’s all about Russian separatists and nuclear codes and elite cyber hackers and no-name American spy agencies. There are eight gazillion characters, and apparently we’re supposed to be able to remember some sideshow guys from four movies ago.

When last we left Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his “family” of driver/robbers, they’d finally found some peace after pulling off one last big job. We learn they’ve been staying in Havana, which in this depiction is a true socialist paradise of cruising cars and women with cheeks hanging out of their skirts.

Dom gets a visit from Cipher, a computer hacker and criminal mastermind, played with hollow eyes and a taunting smirk by Charlize Theron. She shows him an image on her phone, and as a result he turns his back on his crew and becomes her mercenary in some very big heists against the Russian military. His actions are so bewildering, his friends keep wondering aloud: “Has Dominic Toretto finally gone rogue?”

Hint: Dominic Toretto has not gone rogue.

You may remember the other players: Michelle Rodriguez is Letty, Dom’s fiery lady love, now wife; Johnson is Luke Hobbs, a special ops badass who used to chase Dom & Co. but now allies with them; Tyrese Gibson is Roman, the wisecracking, cowardly one; Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is Tej, the brainy tech expert; Nathalie Emmanuel is Ramsey, a hacktivist who created some spying software called God’s Eye in the last movie and now fends off lame sexual innuendo from Roman and Tej.

Jason Statham returns as Shaw, a bad guy for at least one other movie, maybe two. (I really can’t remember.) Now he and Hobbs are in jail together for about a minute and a half, then they’re forced to team up against Cipher. They keep threatening to have a fistfullicious throwdown when their temporary alliance is ended; it gives us something to look forward to.

Kurt Russell shows up as the helpful spy guy pulling some strings, and Scott Eastwood is his dorky young apprentice who eventually wises up. I get the sense Eastwood is being groomed to assume the role of Bland Straitlaced White Guy vacated by Paul Walker.

The movie, directed by F. Gary Gray from a script by Chris Morgan, is big, loud and dumb, but perhaps not big and loud enough for its own good. There’s an astonishing amount of jabbering and people tapping away furious on computer keyboards. This is one of those movies where virtually every object in the world can be controlled by computers, including an army of self-driving cars and even a nuclear submarine.

(Quibble: If you leave the hatch of a sub open, as the characters clearly do, it tends to flood when it submerges. OK, I’ll stop.)

There was one clever and funny bit where Shaw fights a bunch of people on a plane while carrying a very important object, about which I’ll say no more. It’s basically the movie’s MacGuffin, but cuter.

“The Fate of the Furious” is a transcendentally silly movie, rock-headed and testosterone-fueled, but one not without its charms. The car stunts are fun, the bad guys are hiss-able, and even the hyper-masculine peacocking gets so silly the guys start laughing at each other in between boasts and threats.

I wish the thing was 40 minutes shorter. Come to think of it, I wish they’d stopped making these two or three movies ago. But I hear two more are coming, whether we like it or not. Just pay your money and clap for the bear.

Video review: "Kubo and the Two Strings"

“Kubo and the Two Strings” is my favorite animated film of 2016 so far, but it didn’t fare very well at the box office. I think people may have seen a story set in medieval Japan and dismissed it as anime. (Which in of itself is a terrible reason to avoid a movie.) So I’m genuinely hoping people will check it out on video, so more flicks like “Kubo” will be made.

Art Parkinson provides the voice of Kubo, a boy filled with loneliness and magic. With only one eye and a banjo, he trudges into town every day to spin his fantastic tales for the villagers, complete with sheets of paper that come to life, then returns to his seaside cave to care for his mother. A sorceress who fought a terrible long-ago battle with her own family, she’s nearly catatonic – but still has some magic up her sleeve

Later, Kubo is banished to the distant Farlands, placed on a quest to gather three mystic pieces of armor in order to take on the evil Moon King (Ralph Fiennes) – who happens to be his own grandfather. His aunts, known as the Sisters (Rooney Mara), are fearsome witches on the hunt.

Kubo’s only companions are Monkey (Charlize Theron), a protective charm brought to life as be his guardian, and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), a cursed former samurai trapped in the body of a bug.

The stop-motion animation is just astonishing, with a battle with a giant skeleton standing out especially. The depictions of ocean waves and crackling magic are astonishingly life-like.

Director Travis Knight and screenwriters Chris Butler and Marc Haimes continue the fine tradition of stop-motion animation – “Coraline,” “The Boxtrolls,” “The Night Before Christmas” – that’s seen a terrific run the last couple of decades.

Go see/rent/buy “Kubo and the Two Strings,” and let’s keep this ball rolling.

Bonus features are quite good, including a feature-length commentary track with Knight. The Blu-ray and DVD editions also come with three making-of documentaries, focusing the Japanese inspiration for the story, varied landscapes and the mythology behind Kubo.

Upgrade to the 3D combo pack and you add five more featurettes, including ones on monsters and music.

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Review: "Kubo and the Two Strings"

I think I was about halfway through the screening of “Kubo and the Two Strings” before I even realized it was stop-motion animation. The movement is so smooth, the backgrounds so dense and the action so unbound, I figured there was no way this could be the work of puppets slowly moved a frame at a time.

But Laika, the stop-motion studio behind “The Boxtrolls,” “ParaNorman” and “Coraline,” has made another gem with this lyrical story set in medieval Japan.

It’s about a boy, Kubo (voice of Art Parkinson), who has grown up as a virtual orphan near a tiny beach village. He lives in a cave with his mother, who exists in a seemingly never-ending daze, needing help even to eat. But in her more lucid moments she spins tales about the dark history of their family, including the death of his father, Honsou, a mighty warrior, and how as a baby Kubo had one of his eyes stolen by his own grandfather.

(Though the material is carefully presented not to be too frightening, the themes and action scenes may be too intense for smaller children. I would take my 5-year-old to see this, but probably not the 3-year-old.)

Kubo has inherited the magical gift of his mother, which he employs to tell variations on his mother’s stories in the village for money. Using a traditional three-string Japanese banjo, plinked with a triangular pick, and colored paper that comes alive at his beckon to turn into shape-shifting origami to illustrate his tales, it’s an astonishing blend of dazzling visuals and jaunty music. (Dario Marianelli provides the latter.)

Tragedy befalls when Kubo ignores his mother’s warning to never remain outside after sunset, when his grandfather, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes), can see him. The boy finds himself exiled to the barren Farlands. His only companion is Monkey (Charlize Theron), a wooden charm he always carried that came alive via his mother’s spells. Monkey is very protective of the boy, and sternly urges him on his quest to retrieve the three pieces of magical armor necessary to defeat the enemy.

Along the way they encounter the Sisters, very creepy masked twins who are a disturbing amalgam of Japanese and European conceptions of witches, both voiced by Rooney Mara. They also run into this odd creature who looks like a man trapped inside a bug’s chitinous shell; he has no memory, other than insisting he was once a samurai who was cursed. Dubbing the forgetful fellow Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), he joins their little band.

The animation is just wondrous to behold. Several ocean scenes have a mesmerizing quality, especially once you realize there’s no water used. One encounter with a giant skeleton is particularly memorable, both for its fearfulness and intricacy.

“Kubo and the Two Strings” is not your typical animated flick. Though it’s suitable for (nearly) the whole family, it’s got an edge and a timelessness that goes far beyond the familiar cute-critters-and-life-lessons formula. It feels like an ageless Eastern parable, dreamed up by 21^st century American artists.

“If you must blink, do it now!” Kubo invokes at the beginning of each of his tales. Even a wink is too much magic to be missed.

Review: "The Huntsman: Winter's War"

And here arrives Hollywood's most unlikely, unanticipated sequel.

"Snow White and the Huntsman" was an execrable piece of garbage, mindless churning of mythology with a heavy ladling of flashy CGI sauce. But it conjured up a cauldron full of money -- nearly $400 million. So a follow-up became inevitable.

Then star Kristen Stewart was revealed to have dallied with the very married first-time director. Both were promptly given the boot. So how to make a Snow White sequel without Snow White, and give the (unnecessary) male sidekick the spotlight?

Apparently, you give the special effects supervisor from the last film, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, his own rookie shot in the director's chair, order up a script from a pair of journeymen screenwriters (Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin) and put the whole thing on a hurry-up production schedule of 12 months from start of shooting to release -- extraordinarily short for a big-budget spectacle with lots of computerized imagery.

Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, right?

Here's the funny thing: "The Huntsman: Winter's War" is actually an improvement on the original. Which isn't to say it's a great film, or even a good one. But it's a breezily entertaining piece of escapist claptrap, breathed to life by some fine actors who make a brave go at some awkward dialogue and plotting.

And Emily Blunt shines as Freya, the ice queen and sister to Ravenna (Charlize Theron), who was undone by Snow White. In an affecting opening sequence set years before the first movie, we witness her tragedy and transformation into a withdrawn, super-powered mistress who steals children and turns them into her army of huntsmen to conquer all the lands of the north.

This was how Eric, aka The Huntsman, came to be. He rebelled against Freya's edict on showing love by falling for Sara (Jessica Chastain), another unwilling recruit. They were punished severely and separated, apparently by death, though I'm not giving anything away in saying that Sara shows up alive and well -- and mightily P.O.'d -- about a third of the way through.

She blames Eric for abandoning her, but they've got bigger issues to tackle. Namely, that the Magic Mirror has been stolen after giving off all sorts of Evil Warning emanations. Freya wants it for herself as its magic would make her unstoppable, so the huntscouple are on the case.

Tagging along are a pair of dwarves, sweetly dim Nion (Nick Frost) from the last movie and his half-brother Gryff (Rob Brydon), a cross bean-counting sort. They're coming with because... actually, I'm not sure why they're there. Or why a pair of female dwarf thieves (Alexandra Roach and Sheridan Smith) are soon added to the troupe, with obvious smoochy possibilities.

Love conquers all, I guess. Even dangerously thin plots.

The CGI is quite good, though Freya's frost attacks are too clearly inspired by Elsa's from "Frozen." The molten gold effect of the mirror's magic is revived, with a twist.

The action scenes are rather discombobulated, with a lot of needless parkour-style jumps and flips. And there's an abundance of "shaky cam" situated too close to the action to make sense of anything -- the hallmark of filmmakers who don't know how to stage properly.

Hemsworth's character is still a sneering jerk whose ability doesn't match up to his attitude. Given his grim upbringing in Conan-style martial slavery, you'd think he'd be a bit darker. So Chastain's Sara supplies the gloom aplenty.

There really wasn't any reason for this sequel to be made. It's a slapdash affair, using special effects trickery to wallpaper over a story made up of spare parts. But I'd rather watch it 10 times in a row than the first movie again.

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.

Video review: "Prometheus"

Narratively speaking "Prometheus," director Ridley Scott's long-awaited prequel to his seminal 1979 space/horror film "Alien," is one big mess. But it's still a worthy cinematic experience, a potpourri of Scott's flair for sumptuous visuals and sly, creepy mood-building.

Set some decades before Ripley and her gang encountered the black and spidery beasties, Scott and his screenwriters take us back to those same dangerous locales and unnerving themes. The protagonist is again a female, archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), who thinks she's found an invitation from the creators of all life. It turns out to be more of a deathtrap, as the crew is slowly dwindled one by one.

Along for the ride is Charlize Theron as a hardcase representative of the profit-minded company financing the mission, the usual collection of disposable crewmates, and an android assistant named David (Michael Fassbender) who, like all of his ilk, turns out to be less helpful than his cheery nature might suggest.

Things really get strange when they discover a massive alien ship filled with vials of black goo, video records of an accident killing most of the crew, and a 10-foot-tall bald humanoid with a seriously bad attitude. At one point Elizabeth finds herself with an alien creature growing inside her, though in a different method than we've seen in the other movies, and has to submit herself to a horrifically invasive medical procedure to get it out.

The experience of watching this film is akin to wandering in a daze, as you find yourself constantly asking questions, and receiving responses that only provoke more questions. But even if the movie is on some levels unsatisfying, that's because it leaves you wanting more.

"Prometheus" is a real head-scratcher, a riddle of a movie that doesn't really care about finding any answers. The odd, discomfiting journey is its own reward.

Ridley Scott is (in)famous for releasing director's cuts of his movies, but if you want one you'll likely have to wait a few years. Although the video packages being released now contain about 15 minutes worth of deleted/extended scenes, including a new opening and ending, the theatrical version of "Prometheus" is all you'll get.

Interestingly, the film is only being released as a Blu-ray/DVD combination -- there isn't an option for a solo DVD.

The two-disc version comes nicely loaded with features, including two separate commentary tracks by the filmmakers and access (via tablet computer) to a database on the alien culture.

Spring for the four-disc collection, and you'll also receive all sorts of making-of goodies, including pre-visualization drawings and videos, behind-the-scenes peeks and more.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Video review: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

The only thing worse than having two different Snow White adaptations competing for our attention is that neither one of them turned out to be worthy of more than five minutes of it.

First came "Mirror, Mirror" in the spring with a winsome, comedic takeoff on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. It managed to be more cute than funny. Then for summer we got "Snow White and the Huntsman," a down-and-dirty version where Snow grabs a sword and shield and takes it to the evil Queen.

Alas. First-time director Rupert Sanders and star Kristen Stewart may have shared some heat in real life, but it's certainly not up on the screen. This is a long, listless affair featuring a whole bunch of pouting, interrupted occasionally by action scenes with a heavy CGI assist.

And we get the insertion of an unnecessary element, a pumped-up repository of Y-chromosome fortitude -- the eponymous Huntsman, played by Chris Hemsworth fresh off his "Thor" stint. The Huntsman is big and brutish, tagged by the Queen (Charlize Theron) to kill young Snow, but instead signs up as her right-hand man.

Usually in these sorts of movies, it's the useless female character crammed into mix. It turns out doing it the other way doesn't work any better.

The seven dwarves are here, suitably grizzled and alienated as befits the material. And Theron has a few cool scenes as the sorcerous queen, who wants to ensnare Snow so she can suck out the soul to preserve her unearthly beauty. The Mirror on the Wall is turned into a creepy, drippy golem of molten gold whispering in her ear.

Video extras are splendid. The DVD comes with an extended version of the film, a making-of featurette and feature-length commentary by Sanders and his creative team.

Go for the Blu-ray upgrade, and things really get interesting. An interactive viewing feature for tablet or computer lets you pop in and out of the story for behind-the-scenes peek. There are also featurettes focusing on rejuvenating the fairy tale, casting the key roles, creation of special effects and a 360-degree tour of the kingdom.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Young Adult"

"Young Adult" is the egg of a great idea that never really hatches. It's built on an outlandish premise, and after 93 minutes of talking and emoting and frittering around, all we're left with is that same nutty premise.

Here's the nugget: Mavis, the pretty, popular girl from high school returns to her tiny hometown 20 years after graduation in order to win back her teenage beau. Her life hasn't turned out to be the fabulous adventure she imagined when she escaped to the big city, and she wants to recapture her glory days.

One problem: the former boyfriend is happily married and just had a baby. Mavis knows this -- in fact, it's the news of the birth that sets off her unholy mission -- but sees it as merely a bump in the road. She's fully aware that lives may be destroyed in her quest to reignite lost love; she just doesn't care.

So this is a movie about a horrible person who suspects that she's a horrible person, and the audience gets to tag along on her journey to confirm what she already knew.

The acting in "Young Adult" is splendid, especially Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt, who play two fractured souls. Theron is Mavis, who lives in Minneapolis and is the (uncredited) author of Waverly Prep, a teen-lit book series suffering diminishing returns. Oswalt plays Matt, the loser she barely remembers from school, but who ends up being her new best friend when she returns to Mercury, Minn.

Matt is an interesting guy: After struggling to recall Matt -- even though he had the locker next to hers -- Mavis finally remembers him during a chance meeting at a local bar. "You're hate crime guy!" she exclaims. Not exactly a catchy nickname, that.

Matt, who walks with the aid of a crutch, was savagely attacked by some homophobic jocks in high school, who shattered his legs, bashed in his head and maimed his manhood. It was national news as a hate crime, until it turned out Matt wasn't actually gay.

So now he's just a forgotten guy with a limp, who spends his days in an anonymous job and his nights distilling his own brand of bourbon and creating crazy mash-ups of action figures by transposing their parts.

Somehow, though, when Mavis walks back into town they form a deep bond of trust. She tells Matt about her plan to win back Buddy, he old boyfriend, and he tries to dissuade her, though not very hard, having developed a puppyish affection of his own.

Almost irrelevant in all this calculus is the actual ex-boyfriend, Buddy, played by Patrick Wilson, who often seems to get cast as the unattainable object of female longing. Buddy's wife, Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) -- who looks suspiciously amazing for somebody who just popped out a baby -- is oblivious about Mavis' intentions, despite the fact she's not exactly playing it subtle, wearing va-voom outfits to casual get-togethers.

Director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, two of Hollywood's brightest young lights, fail to recapture much of the hip charm of their last collaboration, "Juno." There are a few witty moments, and some black humor that's fairly delicious.

(I especially liked the scene where Mavis visits a local book store and starts signing copies of her novels, until a clerk asks her to stop because they’ll need to return unsold copies to the publisher.)

There is still Cody's penchant for very written-sounding dialogue. Even worse is her tendency to tell the audience what's going on rather than showing them.

For example, when pressed about exactly why she wants to get back with the old boyfriend she's barely interacted with since the 1990s, Mavis essentially bleeps out the movie's entire theme: "He knew me when I was at my best."

Reitman has a great touch with actors, but he's helming a story that never got out of the gestational period. This film takes several characters and puts them through a blender, but we get the distinct sense when all is said and done they will all go on with their lives much the same as before.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "The Road"

A Man. A Boy. We know they are father and son, because they call each other so, but we never learn their names. They're bedraggled and filthy, their cheeks caved in with dire hunger, as they push their meager possessions in a rusty shopping cart down an ash-strewn road, with the threat or horrendous death around every turn.

That's the bleak yet uplifting world of "The Road," one of 2009's best films -- which almost no one saw because it barely got released in theaters.

It's out on video now, and I urge people to give this spare, understated near-masterpiece a chance.

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smith-McPhee star as the pair struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Taking a cue from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") underplays the performances and the dialogue. Screenwriter Joe Penhall lets the emotional drama assert itself without superfluous embellishment.

We're not even sure what turned the world into such a forbidding expanse of death and decay. Nuclear war seems likely. It's not even clear where the man and boy are heading, other than trying to escape winter's grasp and endure another day.

They meet other humans, but most of the time it's not a welcome occasion. With nothing able to grow, much of mankind has resorted to cannibalism for food. It's a zero-sum game whose only conclusion is humanity's extinction.

But among all this crushing bleakness, there is joy and tenderness that is exhilarating.

Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron have brief but powerful roles as, respectively, an ancient man they meet along the road and the wife and mother who deserted them, giving up all hope and abandoning them to her despair.

Extras are the same for both Blu-ray and DVD versions.

There is a making-of documentary and several deleted scenes, as well as a feature-length commentary track by Hillcoat.

I'm actually rather perturbed at how "The Road" was received. Its release was delayed for about a year, perhaps because in the then-new economic devastation, the studio rationalized that audiences wouldn't greet such a downbeat film with much enthusiasm.

Prove them wrong.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "The Road"

What a mystery: How can a movie so spare and bleak be so emotionally rich?

Watching the blasted, gray skies and ash-covered landscape of "The Road," you wonder how this film could be anything but a fatal downer. And yet the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning novel about a father and son navigating a post-apocalyptic wasteland is as joyous a cinematic experience I've had this year.

Director John Hillcoat, who helmed the hard-bitten Western "The Proposition" in 2005, masterfully translates McCarthy's austere prose into an understated epic of survival and human perseverance.

In detailing the quotidian journey of a Man and Boy, who are never even given names, McCarthy often eschewed even punctuation and capitalization. Hillcoat smartly mirrors this style by having his actors underplay, and letting the screenplay by Joe Penhall find its own emotional beats without garnishing them with unnecessary flourishes.

The plot, such as it is, is minimalist. Father and young son are traveling south through the desolation to escape the icy hand of coming winter. They do not have any specific destination or purpose in mind, other than continuing to live.

As in McCarthy's book, it is left unsaid what exactly turned the earth to a cinder -- although nuclear war seems probable. The results are starkly inescapable: There is no sunshine. There are no animals. Tinder-dry trees fall and the earth heaves. Nothing will grow. The only food to be had is the detritus of an orphaned mankind.

There is a way of surviving: Cannibalism. But the father refuses to even consider this, because they're the "good guys." The boy (Kodi Smith-McPhee) and his father repeat this phrase like a mantra, or a hymn.

For a good guy, the father must undertake some pretty horrific tasks. He carries a revolver with two bullets left, which he's saving in case they're caught by the roving gangs of murderers who view them as food. The scene where he shows his son how to use the gun to kill himself -- "Make sure you point up" -- is chilling.

Viggo Mortensen expertly plays the father, a man who forces himself to give up hope and the memory of his spouse in order to concentrate on keeping the boy alive. His wife (played in flashbacks by Charlie Theron) gave up her own life, literally walking away from them, because she couldn't stand the thought of life in the aftermath.

There's a spiritual element to the tale, as in the father's admonishment to his son to "keep the fire alive," pointing at his heart. In the man's sporadic narration, it's made even more plain.

"All I know is the child is my warrant. If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke," the father says.

Their journey is episodic and compelling. At one point they lose all their meager possessions and have nothing to eat, but then stumble upon a treasure trove of wealth. They come across an ancient man (Robert Duvall) along the road who is nearly blind but sees much. They are hunted, and pursue their own quarry. Anger is unleashed; blood is shed.

And yet it's in the small moments that the film finds an aching tenderness, like when the father pulls a warm blanket off a shriveled corpse and lovingly wraps it around his shivering son. It's the understatement of "The Road" that speaks loudly.

3.5 stars