Reeling Backward: "Minority Report" (2002)

"Minority Report" is the most un-Spielberg film ever made by Steven Spielberg.

There is plenty of heartbreak and sadness in Spielberg's movies. Certainly fractured families are a central theme. He's made movies about the Holocaust, D-Day and World War I trenches. The film he made right before this one was "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," in which bereaved parents replace their dying son with a robot who's been tricked into thinking he's a real boy.

And yet, there is an undercurrent of light and hopefulness in his oeuvre that I find (mostly) missing in "Minority Report," though "A.I." probably comes closest in its dystopian themes and dour mood.

In both movies technology has led to seemingly amazing achievements to benefit society, but there's an insidious bargain underneath that threatens to upend the balance. That's not surprising since it was based on a short story by the immortal Philip K. Dick, whose fears about the future essentially created its own film genre, tech noir. It was adapted for the screen by John Cohen and Scott Frank.

I remember liking the film when it came out but not being amazed as other critics were. One of the areas I still find it lacking is the sense of an entire world being built around star Tom Cruise. Instead, it seems like Spielberg and his team created just enough pieces to serve as a backdrop, and no more. He doesn't paint in the corners.

There are the automated cars that move both horizontally and vertically, but other than a chase scene where Cruise leaps from vehicle to vehicle, they're not really explored as a (literally) transportive societal evolution. Things seem... pretty well the same as they are now. They even have The Gap, in a self-reflexive bit of product placement.

Though maybe the sameness is a commentary in and of itself.

Set in the year 2054, the film has been pointed to as being prescient in its depiction of coming technological upheaval. We obviously don't have the ability to predict the future or record thoughts into a video stream, though VR headsets can do a pretty good job of putting you into a created reality. And the mind-altering drug people use in the film, neuroin, bears disturbing similarities to the opioid epidemic of today.

All the newspapers and magazines automatically update with the latest headlines, which if you were in the news business in the early Aughts, the talk of "e-paper" being the format of the future was all the rage. Instead we turned to reading on hard, graceless, 4-inch screens.

Most interesting is the ever-present eye scanners, taking a cool gadget that's a staple of the spy and sci-fi genres and turning it into an intimating facet of a world where our movements are continuously tracked -- ostensibly for consumerist purposes, but as we quickly see the government is piggybacking on the gaze.

We don't use "eye-D," as it's called in the movie, so ubiquitously or without consent. But think about how our online explorations are customized through cookies and trackable data. Everyone knows how they've searched for a product and then seen ads for similar wares plastering our web carousing. Or getting a report every month from Google Maps telling you exactly where you've been, and when.

Most of us would be mortified to have our browser history made public. In the world of "Minority Report," everything about us is on continual surveillance and display, up to and including the things we think about doing. Literally, people are arrested and punished for things they were about to do.

The story is at its root a meditation on free will and predestination. Usually such tales are set against a theological backdrop -- if God determines our path, how are we really free to choose?

As a good Catholic boy growing up, I was instructed that thinking about committing an act is just a much a sin as actually doing it. This was taught as a way to forbid sinful thoughts, but as any pubescent soon realized, they're as impossible to shut out as the old saw of "Don't think about elephants."

I think it was George Carlin who observed that the majority of Catholics who lapsed figured out that if you were going to be punished equally for thinking about doing something, you might as well experience the fun of actually doing it.

("I'll take glaring holes in catechism for $1,000, Alex.")

The film largely eschews religious issues, other than the decoration of some people considering the three "precogs" as deities unto themselves. They are children born of early neuroin users with psychic gifts, which used in conjunction can read people's evil intents before even they themselves are aware of them.

Of course, this also involves being imprisoned in a floating "milk bath" that heightens their powers, kept eternally pumped full of hallucinogens and fawned over by a quite possibly lecherous keeper, Wally (Daniel London).

Agatha (Samantha Morton) is the "most gifted" of the three, twins Dashiell and Arthur basically serving as assist men to the true genius. The three are named after famous mystery writers, and were trained by Dr. Hineman (Lois Smith), now living out her days in lonesome regret.

As is often the case in real life, the creative partner was outlasted and outmaneuvered by the business shark, in this case Max von Sydow as Lamar Burgess, who is now desperate to take the "PreCrime" experiment from Washington D.C. to a national stage. This means jumping through small hoops held by big people.

Hence the arrival of the inquisitive mind of Danny Witwer, a wolf-like young assistant attorney general played by Colin Farrell in his breakout role in American films. He instantly focuses his attention on Chief John Anderton (Cruise), who is the heroic public face of PreCrime. John lost his own son in a bizarre abduction at a public swimming pool years earlier, tanking his marriage to Lara (Kathryn Morris) and turning him into a stealth neuroin user.

In early scene, John goes jogging through the shady part of D.C., his real purpose to obtain a fix, which he uses to heighten his mood while watching (crude) holographic home movies of his lost kid. The blind dealer removes his glasses to reveal cavernous empty eye sockets, seemingly revealing his very brains, with the admonishment, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!"

Watching the movie again, this line heralds a lot of high-contrast photography by cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, including a plethora of shots where one of a character's eyes are turned away or lost in shadow.

For me, the faster the movie's plot-stirring gets, the more I tend to lose interest as it gets into pure chase-chase mode. Neal McDonough plays Fletch, John's former right-hand man now charged with leading the hunt for him. "Everybody runs" is their mantra, leading to some slick action scenes with flying power suits and "sick sticks," glowing batons that instantly make their target retch.

In one of the movie's coolest but most inscrutable sequences, John goes to have his eyes swapped out in a black market procedure to fool the eye-D scans.

Peter Stormare plays the bottom-bucket doctor, who blows snot all over his hand right before sucking out John's eyeballs. In a riveting soliloquy, the not-good doctor reminds John -- now addled by anesthesia -- that the chief locked him away years ago for intentionally setting his patients on fire, and now back-alley eye jobs are the only medical work he can do.

It revs up to a classic "I shall have my revenge" declaration:

"For true enlightenment there is nothing like... well, let's just say taking a shower while this large fellow with an attitude you couldn't knock down with a hammer, that keeps whispering in your ear: 'Oh Nancy, Oh Nancy.' Now that was a lot of fun, thank you so very much John for putting me in there, thank you so very much for giving me an opportunity to get to know myself much better."

As near as I can figure, though, the doc never actually extracts any kind of revenge. He competently performs his job, at less than his usual rate, even. John has a nasty encounter with a putrid sandwich and spoiled milk placed in the fridge of his recovery flophouse, though they appear to be genuine accidents as he blindly reaches on the wrong shelf from where the fresh sustenance lies.

As much as I enjoy Stormare's effortless creepy presence and off-kilter line readings, this whole bit feels like a buildup to an important moment that never arrives. I believe the whole thing could be chopped down to quick montage and improve the pacing. Though this would maybe suck some of the life out of the subsequent house search by tiny "spiders," disc-like robots with wire-thin appendages deployed by the PreCrime brutes to infiltrate and forcibly eye-D people

Hence Cruise's green eyes become dark brown halfway through the movie. He keeps the old eyes in a plastic biggie to sneak back into the PreCrime HQ (no one thinking to lock out his profile, apparently) with the intent to have them put back one day, but comically loses one down a drain.

Tim Blake Nelson turns up as Gideon, the wheelchair-deployed officiate of the PreCrime "prison" where reside people judged and sentenced without actually committing any dastardly acts. They lie forever dreaming in plastic tubes, wearing coma-inducing "halos" around their heads like fallen angels as Gideon plays them orgiastic organ music to calm their prematurely damned souls.

As Nelson brings an innate disquieting anxiety to his roles, one instantly wonders if, like Wally, Gideon is supplanting his official duties with an occasional tug 'n' grope of his comelier charges.

John himself is briefly sentenced to the halo prison, his long run finally ending due to the machinations of Burgess, who is using his protege as the sacrificial pawn to ensure PreCrime is cleared for a national rollout. Lara springs him... surprisingly easily, and many have wondered if the film's entire last act is a big guffaw and everything we've seen is merely the imaginings of John, still trapped in his plastic prison on a never-ending high.

This would, of course, be a mirror of the finale of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," one of my all-time favorite films and a clear inheritor of Philip K. Dick's prescient, precious paranoia. His cinematic children were legion, even without an official credit.

And while I don't think "Minority Report" is among the finest of the adaptations, it's a film that has aged rather well in nearly a couple of clicks down the big highway. There was even a briefly lived TV series a few years ago that came and went without me (or anyone) much noticing.

Things end on a (somewhat artificial) high note -- Burgess slain by his own hand, PreCrime disbanded and the not-yet criminals released, Agatha and the twins relocated from their enforced isolation in the pool to a self-imposed one in a lonely cottage on a Scottish cliff or wherever, free to live in the now and not the future.

John even caresses the swelling belly of Lara, their love reborn with another life and shot at parenthood. It seems that free will does reign, along with happy endings in Spielberg flicks -- even if it takes two-plus hours of haunting parable to get there.

Review: "Dumbo"

Where’s the magic?

There’s nary a sprinkle of faerie dust in “Dumbo,” the new take on a Disney icon from director Tim Burton that never takes flight. Instead of a gentle fable about circus animals helping each other, it’s a standard-issue action spectacle complete with adorable kids, a missing parent and a cackling villain.

The new “Dumbo” is so human-heavy, the CGI elephant is relegated to being a sideshow.

Look, I’ve been agnostic about Disney’s let’s-take-our-animated-classics-and-turn-them-into-live-action-flicks obsession. I thought “Cinderella” perfectly wonderful. “Maleficent” was uneven but inspired. And this trend isn’t going away. Heck, we’ve got “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” on the docket just in the next few months.

But this adaptation is a total flop. It’s flat, colorless and almost hypnotically unemotional. The screenplay by Ehren Kruger feels like it was written by someone who only saw the 1941 original underwater with the sound turned off.

Danny DeVito gets in a few early kicks as Max Medici, the chatterbox owner of the Medici Bros. Circus where Dumbo is born. (Like most things with Max, the “brother” is flimflam; he’s the sole Medici.) After he agrees to sell out to upscale conman V. A. Vandevere, owner of the extravagant Dream Land amusement park, Max just stands around with hardly anything to say.

Vandevere (Michael Keaton) manages to be both humorless and un-scary. He wears a swoopy silver toupee and has an announcer preceding him everywhere he goes so folks know he’s important. He keeps a French former aerialist, Collette aka “Queen of the Heavens” (Eva Green), on his arm just because he wants people to think he’s sleeping with a knockout rather than actually sleeping with her.

Colin Farrell, an Irishman doing a woeful Okie accent, plays Holt Farrier, former center ring king as the head cowboy act of the Stallion Stars, recently returned from the war. Alas, he lost an arm to battle overseas and his wife to influenza while he was away. His two moppets, Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins), act as de facto friends and guardians of Dumbo.

The story, set in 1919, starts in Sarasota, Fla., and turns through small towns to Joplin, Mo., where Dumbo is born to a mother elephant named Jumbo that Max has just bought at discount. When baby Jumbo pops out with those big floppy ears, Max immediately wires to demand a refund for damaged goods.

The kids notice that the baby seems to hover for a second or two whenever he sneezes after inhaling a feather, though of course none of the grown-ups believe them. Eventually, though, he puts on the act in front of a crowd and soon dollar signs are springing in front of everyone’s eyes. Vandavere shows up almost immediately and offers Max a partnership -- the kind where he calls all the shots.

I’m truly not sure why this movie exists. There’s no overtaxed stork delivering Dumbo; Timothy Q. Mouse is glimpsed briefly but doesn’t speak and plays no role; the pink elephants on parade are mere soap bubbles; and forget about a murder of crows teaching Dumbo to fly. It’s pure elephant ear power.

Speaking of those ears: the CGI is good enough that it seems plausible Dumbo could get airborne by flapping them hard enough. But he’s just a little baby; what happens when he grows up and weighs five tons? Even hummingbird speed wouldn’t be enough to get higher than a peanut’s breadth off the ground.

Same goes for the movie, earthbound and ugh-y.

Review: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"

 The act of watching “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” is like riding an amusement park ride with the speed set way too fast. There are indeed many amazing creatures in the movie, but they whiz by so quickly they barely have time to register. Characters are introduced and misplaced in a flash. Storylines stretch out before us like a tangle of vines, and we must step lively to figure out which ones lead to dead ends.

Even Eddie Redmayne as the main character, Newt Scamander, does not seem entirely there. Chin perpetually in his chest, eyes averted, he stammers and fidgets like a fourth-rate Hugh Grant character in a romantic comedy, minus all the charm. He’s dizzy and ditzy, a mop-headed sorcerous dipstick who’s more a set of quirks than any attempt to build a character.

(His mushed-mouth line readings don’t help, either.)

“Fantastic Beasts” was a 2001 novel by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling that purported to be the textbook written by Newt, a famed “magizoologist,” that Harry and the gang read their first year at Hogwarts. It wasn’t actually a tale of his adventures, more a creature compendium complete with doodles and scribbled notes.

Now Rowling takes her first stab at screenwriting to chronicle Newt’s adventures as a young man in 1920s New York City. David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter movies, is brought in for continuity.

Newt arrives in the Big Apple after a year abroad, studying and collecting magical creatures in the hopes of keeping them safe from wizards and witches who might do them harm out of fear. He carries a magical suitcase that he can step into and out of, and inside is his zoo full of critters. It’s enormous in there -- complete with different ecosystems for the various beasts’ needs -- but some of the naughtier ones have a tendency to escape.

Indeed, the entire manic story is about creatures getting loose from the suitcase as Newt and his companions race around to recapture them. Of course, they also deliberately free some others as circumstances demand, so the whole thing turns into a bizarre offshoot of “Ghostbusters.”

It’s stuff like this that drives me buggo. If Newt is a talented enough wizard to create a whole world inside a bag, why couldn’t he make a decent lock to keep them sealed in and safe? Also, since we know about wizards/witches living separately from the non-magical humans, how would these creatures exist in the wild next to regular critters without ever being discovered?

Almost as soon as Newt steps off the boat, his wayward creatures are blamed for several disturbing incidents around the city -- described as a dark wind with glowing white eyes tearing up buildings and streets. He’s hauled in by Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), an interloping bureaucrat with the American magical authorities who’s been busted down rank for past transgressions. They’re briefly locked up by Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), the Director of Magical Security. With his martial bearing and contrasting black-and-grey hairdo, we just know he’s up to no good.

There are a lot of other characters in the mix -- too many to describe, and certainly too many for the filmmakers to adequately juggle.

There’s Porpentina’s sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), who’s got a Marilyn Monroe va-va-voom thing going on; she can read minds but isn’t bothered by the lustful thoughts men have about her. Dan Fogler plays Jacob Kowalski, a good-natured No-Maj (that’s American for muggle) who dreams of starting a bakery and gets unwittingly roped into the fray so he can ask lots of questions and carry the exposition.

Loitering around the edges of the story are the Second Salemers, who want to bring back the witch trials with a vengeance. They’re led by Mary Lou Barebon (Samantha Morton), a terrifying puritanical figure who adopts urchins off the street, then uses and abuses them. Credence (Ezra Miller) is her eldest and creepiest charge.

There’s also the rich and powerful Shaw family, with Jon Voight as the newspaper magnate patriarch, whose reason for inclusion in the movie remains a mystery till the end. A loathsome goblin gangster (voice by Ron Perlman) makes a brief impression with his backward-bent fingers.

I spent most of my time watching “Fantastic Beasts” just trying to catch up. What was the name of that creature? What did Newt just say? What’s this about a girl he once loved? What exactly are these fearsome “obscurials” we keep hearing about?

It’s often said that the main challenge in adapting a book to the screen is paring it down to size. This movie’s got a novel’s worth of imagination, all spun together in a less-than-magical vortex.

Review: "Saving Mr. Banks"

Hollywood loves to tell stories about itself, and here’s a movie from Walt Disney Pictures about the making of one of its own iconic films, and starring Walt himself. Or rather, co-starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, a supporting role for the main character of author P.L. Travers, played by Emma Thompson.

The tale is quite simple: the irascible, guarded Mrs. Travers – don’t you dare call her Miss – doesn’t want to sell her novel “Mary Poppins” to Disney and see it turned into a piece of puffy fantasy. But she needs the money, and agrees to come out to California to collaborate with the film’s production team, while Old Walt works his twinkly charm to convince her to sign over the book rights.

The movie is essentially one long dance between Travers and Disney, with the two struggling mightily to understand a person so extravagantly different from themselves. Of course, we know how it all turned out.

(Or, at least we think we do. The film ends with the pair more or less making their peace over their very different conceptions for “Mary Poppins,” but in fact she so reviled what Disney did with her work that she forbade any further adaptations of her books.)

I really wanted to like this movie, but it held so very few surprises for me. We know early on from the flashbacks to Travers’ Australian childhood that she adored her sweet, alcoholic wastrel father (Colin Farrell) and used him as the basis for the father figure, Mr. Banks, in “Mary Poppins.” So it’s all a matter of Disney learning enough about her to puzzle out the truth.

The scene where he finally confronts her about her fears is splendidly acted by Hanks and Thompson, but flat as dry toast. It’s never a good thing when the audience is three steps ahead of the characters.

The early section is mostly about Travers playing the fish-out-of-water role, peevishly negotiating the Hollywood scene. She’s disruptive and contemptuous, treating everyone she meets quite shabbily, especially Disney’s underlings. She even dismisses the songs written for the film by the legendary Sherman Brothers (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman), and regards some animated critters as vile interlopers.

Bradley Whitford turns up as screenwriter Don DaGradi, Kathy Baker is a tough studio exec and Rachel Griffiths plays Travers’ aunt. Paul Giamatti brightens things up as her appointed chauffeur, an obstinately cheerful man who serves absolutely no purpose in the story, but we just like having him around.

Since we’re discussing a film about the creative process, let me tell you a little bit about mine. I prefer to see one movie at a time, write the review within the next 24 hours, more or less be absorbed in that experience, and move on to the next. The crush of late-year screenings made that impossible, and quite frankly, I’m having trouble recalling “Saving Mr. Banks” very well. It’s only been a few days since I’ve seen it, but mentally it’s already slipping through my fingers like sand.

The best movies, and sometimes even the worst, stick with you because they make a strong impression that lingers. There are films I’ve seen only a single time many years ago that I can evoke with great clarity, both the movie itself and how I reacted to it at the time.

I’m afraid “Saving Mr. Banks” is already floating away like Poppins herself, she to her next nanny job and me the next movie review. I just wish there had been a spoonful of magic while we journeyed together.

Video review: "Epic"

“Epic” is an animated movie with a big name but a small story to tell. And I mean literally tiny -– it’s set in the secret world of the forest where miniscule creatures battle between good and evil.

One the one side is Leafmen, micro-sized soldiers who wear nuts, sticks and what have you as armor. They protect the land from decay and intrusion by the Boggans, little insectoid creatures led by the villainous Mandrake (Christoph Waltz).

The set-up is that this long-running war has happened virtually under the noses of humans, who are too lumbering and self-absorbed to see the wee critters. Except, that is, for a half-mad scientist who studies them without much success. His estranged daughter Mary Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) comes to visit and is accidentally shrunk down to the size of the Leafmen, and soon joins them in their quest.

It seems the old queen of the forest has fallen to Mandrake’s schemes, and unless a new magical seed pod is brought to just the right place at just the right time, it will bloom in darkness and evil will reign.

Narratively, “Epic” has too much going on, with a romantic side story involving M.K. and a wayward Leafman (Josh Hutcherson), a psychedelic wise man voiced by Steven Tyler, and a pair of sluggish doofs who act as comic relief.

The life-lessons parts are slathered on a little too heavy, with M.K. and her dad learning to bond, the young Leafman finds out that working together as a team isn’t so bad, and so on.

It is a great-looking picture, and director Chris Wedge (“Ice Age”) has a nice feel for action and landscape.

Fast-paced and filled with cartoony action, “Epic” should entertain little kids well enough, though their parents might be tempted to wander out of the room.

Video extras are quite good, and you don’t have to buy the most expensive package to get some nice stuff.

The DVD comes with several featurettes, including an educational one about real-life insects who use camouflage. There’s also a mobile app (for Android and iOS) that allows kids to color and create their own adventure, even recording their own voice, and play it back for others.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack, and you add another featurette and a comprehensive making-of documentary, “Mysteries of Moonhaven Revealed.”

Movie:

Extras: 

Review: "Total Recall"

I didn't think it was possible, but they've actually done a remake of "Total Recall" that is a less contemplative movie than the 1990 one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is not an insult.

This redo starring Colin Farrell is a slick and expensive-looking chase movie that never really lets up. It doesn't amount to anything more than one big long chase, so if you're looking for freaky-deaky ruminations about the metaphysics of implanted memories, you'd best move along.

But the actions scenes are crisply staged, Kate Beckinsale makes for one of the best female cinematic villains we've seen in a while, and the visual backdrop of the cramped, dystopian future is pretty ambitious -- even if director Len Wiseman did crib at least 75 percent of it from "Blade Runner."

The new "Recall"and the old are both based on Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," with both movies taking extreme liberties with that short story. Dick was a fecund talent who wrote about the intersection of technology and alienation, and his characters fretted constantly about whether their own thoughts were falsified or compromised by scientific "progress."

The first movie version, directed by Paul Verhoeven, was horrifically violent R-rated action/adventure built around the star persona of Schwarzenegger. The Austrian ironman had done a couple of comedies by then poking fun at (or making use of) his mechanical acting abilities and warped pronunciations, and that smirky tilt got folded into the mix. The film generated several of the most memorable "Arnie-isms" -- "See you at the party, Richter!" and "Consider that a divorce" being the most often quoted.

The remake diverges in many ways from the 1990 version -- no doubt you've heard about the most noticeable way, in that the action never takes our hero to the planet of Mars, his lifelong wish. But Wiseman and screenwriters Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback take pains to offer up several visual and dialogue cues as a nod to the first film.

The infamous three-breasted prostitute is here, and a certain big-boned woman with red hair is conspicuous at a security checkpoint. (I remember how strange and unlikely that idea seemed two decades ago -- being scanned and prodded and questioned, just to travel from point A to B. Now we accept it as a matter of course.)

Farrell also utters another Arnie line verbatim -- "If I'm not me, then who the hell am I?"

The basic setup is the same. Doug Quaid is a shmo blue-collar worker who dreams of traveling to Mars, but lacks the dough. He goes to a dream factory to have some memories of adventures as a secret agent implanted -- but something goes awry when their scans reveal he actually is a secret agent. Doug takes out an entire squad of police, then returns home to find his loving wife Lori (Beckinsale) is a plant tasked with watching over him.

Doug killed Lori in the first movie pretty quickly, but here she's turned into his tireless nemesis. Despite her willowy physique, Beckinsale is convincing as an acrobatic ass-kicker, and the relentless nature of her pursuit gives her an almost supernatural aura.

Instead of mutants on Mars, Doug fights for the rebels in The Colony -- once the nation of Australia but now once again a vassal of the English empire, reborn as the United Federation of Brittania. Most of the world is a toxic wasteland, the Brits need some elbow room, and the Colony has it.

Perhaps the most amazing feature of this world is The Fall, the only mode of transport between Europe and Australia. It's a massive elevator that passes right through the core of the Earth, with the gravity reversing itself halfway through. The first time we see this, we know it will be a plot point later on.

Also cool are the synthetic policemen, who sort of resemble Robocop if he'd become a dancer in "The Black Swan" and gone on a starvation diet. There's some subplot about a "kill code" that will instantly shut down all the robots at once, but we're not sure if that's a ruse or a part of Doug's false memories.

Jessica Biel plays Melina, a rebel girl who has a thing for Doug. Her character doesn't make as much of an impact as Beckinsale, but it does give an excuse for several girl-on-girl fight scenes, which the filmmakers happily obliging.

Bryan Cranston plays the head poo-bah of the Federation, and he cackles and snarls and taunts with obvious relish. This is the second movie this summer in which Cranston, who's become something of an acting demigod for his work on that TV show "Breaking Bad," plays a tawdry villain, and both are pretty one-note performances with a heavy pinch of schmaltz. Someone, please find this man better film roles, now!

Bill Nighy appears as the head of the resistance, and I'll save you the trouble of wondering by stating that he does not emerge from some other guy's potbelly.

The violence in this "Total Recall" is rather aesthetically pure in a decidedly PG-13-rated way. Both Farrell and Biel get kicked and punched in the face so much their heads should've swelled up to the size of watermelons, but instead they get a bunch of small facial cuts that bleed profusely and then disappear two scenes later. (Except for one on Doug's right ear that appears to be "sticky.")

Is this "Total Recall" decidedly better or worse than the other one? Not really. And I'll cop to missing Schwarzenegger's dominating, grinning, vowel-strangling presence.

But it's a fun, fast-moving story that will entertain and occasionally amaze you. That already puts it into the "save" pile, ahead of many other movies I'd like to be able to hit a button to forget.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Fright Night"

I may risk getting smacked around by my fellow Gen Xers, but let's face it -- the original "Fright Night" was just not a very good movie.

Somehow over the last quarter-century it's gained nostalgic cachet as a modern horror classic. But it's just not very scary, or very funny, or particularly distinctive in any way.

Maybe the one takeaway from writer/director Tom Holland's film was this idea of vampires not as mythical monsters, but real killers who could literally be living next door. The evolution of the vampire ethos has shuffled along down this same route to the glut of current incarnations, as blood-suckers not just preying on us but living among us while doing it.

The remake has a few things going for it. One is the casting of Colin Farrell as Jerry, the cool dude who moves in next door to teen hero Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin -- who seems to be everywhere lately). With his dark, brooding good looks (assisted via computer-generated imagery), Farrell makes for a convincing nosferatu in the smoldering way audiences seem to prefer their vampires these days.

But the script by Marti Noxon just doesn't give Farrell very much to do other than pose and strut. With his strange mannerisms and cool-uncle shtick -- always addressing Charley as "Hey, guy..." -- Jerry seems more like a third-rate male model on depressants than a horrifying night killer.

The idea of transporting the action to Las Vegas, where homes in the suburban desert are being foreclosed or simply abandoned at a prodigious rate, reflects our downbeat national mood, as well as helping explain why locals aren't so curious about people suddenly showing up missing.

Toni Collette plays Charley's mom, a real estate agent who keeps so busy her garage is filled with For Sale signs. Her job is to be clueless, just like the rest of the adults Charley encounters, disbelieving his increasingly fantastic tales about Jerry. What a shame to see an actress of Collette's talents in a generic, lackluster role.

Imogen Poots plays Amy, Charley's new girlfriend, a pretty, popular member of the school's trend-setters. A recurring theme is that dweeby Charley is taking pains to conceal his formerly nerdy ways from Amy -- including disavowing his best friend, the equally geeky Ed. Ed is played by Christopher Mintze-Plasse, who's found a niche in Hollywood playing nerds with an inordinate amount of ego.

Roddy McDowall had one of his signature roles in the original, playing Peter Vincent, a scaredy-cat host of a low-rent cable TV creature feature show, who turns out to have some genuine expertise in the dark arts. That character is transformed, unimaginatively, into a Criss Angel-type magician played by David Tennant.

Instead of tremulous and pathetic, Peter Vincent is a soul-blasted wastrel who holes up in his Vegas penthouse with all sorts of occult items and weapons -- which we just know will be put to good use in the movie's final, unavoidable showdown.

Director Craig Gillespie, who's made offbeat films like "Mr. Woodcock" and "Lars and the Real Girl," has a nice eye and gives "Fright Night" some menacing visual flair. But this is a remake of a movie made without much care, and it shows.

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "Horrible Bosses"

"Horrible Bosses" had me, and then it lost me, and then it got me back again. This often clever, sporadically vexing comedy takes the premise of Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" and turns it into a horny goofball affair. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day play three working stiffs who each have what the title says they have. They resolve to kill their evil bosses, with each doing another's boss to throw off suspicion.

Of course, because they're angsty modern men rather than calculating killers, they mess the whole thing up and get into a bunch of comedic scrapes -- or one big one, depending on how you count it.

I enjoyed the set-ups as we meet the bosses, learn the trio's personalities and how they mesh. The section where they slowly come around to the idea of offing their supervisors, try to find a hit man and ultimately resolve to do the deed themselves isn't very funny, and seemed to go on and on.

Director Seth Gordon and his trio of screenwriters needed to give this script another wash or two.

But once the movie hit its stride during one long night of hi jinks, it's a decent enough laugh-fest to garner it a marginal letter of recommendation.

Bateman, the rare child star who turned into a fine adult actor, has a very specific sense of comic timing. He usually plays variations on the same character -- the precise, easily perturbed and slightly anal-retentive nice guy who is vexed by the vagaries of others. In this case it's Dave Harken, played by Kevin Spacey riffing on his "Swimming with Sharks" character. Bateman plays Nick, who's been busting his hump for eight years to land a promotion ... one guess if he gets it.

The archenemy of Kurt (Sudeikis) is his boss' son, a coke-head with a horrid comb-over played by Colin Farrell. When the old man bites it, the son is put in charge and demands that people be fired to squeeze more profits out of the company to fuel his partying. Sounds like some newspaper executives I know.

Most people would not acknowledge Dale's (Day) problem as a real dilemma. A recently engaged dental technician, Dale is being sexually harassed by his dentist, Julia, improbably played by Jennifer Aniston. Julia's favorite trick is to knock her patients out with gas and then try to grope her subordinate.

My problem with these bosses is that they're all cartoons. They do not exist anywhere outside a Hollywood screenplay. Take Aniston's Julia. She could have any man she desired, so why would she pick on the short, hirsute and excitable Dale? It's like she has a hobbit fetish or something.

Farrell's character, Bobby, has the potential to be the most interesting, with his complete lack of empathy for fellow humans and a house crammed full of pinball machines and paintings of himself. ("A douche bag museum," Nick dubs it.) Unfortunately, the movie spends the least amount of time with him, so don't get to know him well enough to truly hate him.

Spacey's a treat playing nasty, since he does it so well. Jamie Foxx turns up as a heavily tattooed con with a colorful name.

"Horrible Bosses" isn't horrid, and sometimes it feels like punching a clock. But there's more good than tedious, and having to watch it didn't make me hate my job.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" is a fitting final bow for star Heath Ledger, who died midway through the shooting of this kooky, wonderful flight of fancy from director Terry Gilliam ("The Fisher King").

Ledger plays Tony, a mysterious figure with amnesia who gets adopted by a traveling theater troupe whose featured act, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a (literally) ancient mystic. Living like circus carnies, they put on a show in which people can wander through a dreamscape of Parnassus' creation, where they're tempted by the Devil himself (Tom Waits).

Since reality is unsettled inside the Imaginarium, Tony changes appearance every time he goes inside (Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp lent a hand to stand in for Ledger). Even though it's an ad-hoc necessity, it's still a lovely storytelling device.

Gilliam spins his most Gilliam-esque tale, one full of strange metaphysical themes, computer-generated universes and shadowy motives.

The film died in theaters, but I'm truly hoping audiences will give it a chance on video. I would hate the idea that, like Parnassus, Gilliam is a forgotten old man spinning his odd tales for a world that has stopped listening.

As you might expect, DVD extras on this film wouldn't be complete without an exploration of how the production was affected by the death of Ledger, and "Parnassus" certainly delivers.
The most wrenching bits are costume and makeup tests with Ledger, and an audio interview right before shooting started. Gilliam says cast and crew gathered to discuss if it was even possible to complete the movie.

Seven featurettes explore various topics such the CGI creative process and the film's red carpet moments. In an introduction and feature-length commentary, Gilliam is an amusing and illuminating guide -- at one point he confesses that even he's not certain of Dr. Parnassus' exact history and powers.

He says he started out wanting to make something "light and joyful," without the neuroses that he'd been exploring all his career. If that was his aim with "Parnassus," then he certainly failed.
But for real Gilliam fans, it's the very irrational nature of his imagination that make him such a compelling filmmaker.

In addition to the aforementioned features, the Blu-ray version also has "The Imaginarium of Terry Gilliam" and remembrances of Ledger by cast and crew.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Crazy Heart"

Not long ago I was watching an old Jeff Bridges movie (1972's "Fat City") and blogged that he "is quietly having one of the great film acting careers."

And this was before I saw "Crazy Heart," perhaps the finest performance of that 50-year run.

Never winning, Bridges has been nominated four times for an Oscar -- for "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot," "The Last Picture Show," "The Contender" and "Starman" -- and should have been nominated at least four other times -- "The Fisher King," "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," "Seabiscuit" and "The Fabulous Baker Boys." (Probably "Fearless," too.)

"Crazy Heart" will earn Bridges number five, and perhaps the elusive golden statuette.

He plays Bad Blake, a once-famous country singer who has reached the bottom of the barrel, and just kept burrowing downward. As we first meet him, he arrives to play a gig at a bowling alley, pouring out a jug of urine from the long drive in his battered '78 Suburban: Bad is literally pissing his life away.

He's 57, with a Dunlop belly spilling over his Texas-sized belt buckle, a scraggly beard and a face creased like aged leather. He smokes persistently, drinks whiskey prodigiously, and sings mournful songs about regret and loss to the few diehard fans who care to show up.

"I used to be somebody, but now I'm somebody else," goes one of his typical lyrics. A crowd favorite is, "It's funny how falling feels like flying ... for a little while."

Bridges embodies these songs (by Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett) the way he does the role itself: With an easy, vanity-free grace that never feels like it's trying to impress for its own sake.

Bad is a man with no illusions about his has-been status, motoring from one tiny Southwestern town to another, taking any gig he can get, happily obliging any female fan who wants a roll in the sack with a once-legend -- even if the groupies are rougher-looking than they used to be.

In Santa Fe, he's surprised to find a good piano player to back him, and even more surprised by the pianist's niece, a newspaper reporter who wants an interview. Played by Maggie Gyllenhaal -- in a full-bodied turn worthy of its own nod come Oscar time -- Jean is a single mom with a 4-year-old, who's had a run of bad luck with men.

She convinces herself, against her better judgment, to green-light Bad's syrupy, well-worn come-on ("I wanna talk about how bad you make this room look") and eventually enter a relationship with a man whose notion of commitment is measured in the distance to his next town and the price of his next bottle of rattlesnake hooch.

"Crazy Heart" was directed by first-timer Scott Cooper, who also penned the screenplay from the novel by Thomas Cobb. I loved the authentic little details with which Cooper infuses his film -- like Bad, who treats his own body like a cesspool, polishing his guitar with reverence.

The supporting performances are similarly tidy, with Robert Duvall (also a producer on the film) as Bad's lone friend/bartender, and Colin Farrell as Tommy Sweet, a former protégé whose star has greatly eclipsed that of his mentor, much to both men's dismay.

But there's no mistaking who the frontman is of this ballad, so sad and so true. Jeff Bridges' masterful portrayal of a man who used to be somebody is pitch-perfect.

3.5 stars

Review: "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"

To my mind, there really are only two kinds of people in the world: Those who think that Terry Gilliam is a cinematic genius, and those who are mistaken.

The former animator and member of the Monty Python troupe has had his ups and downs -- more down lately. In fact, he seems cursed.

Gilliam's last film, "Tideland," was barely released. The Don Quixote project he spent years trying to make fell apart -- the only tickets sold were for "Lost in La Mancha," a documentary chronicling the fiasco.

Consider his latest, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." His star, Heath Ledger, died tragically less than halfway through shooting. One week after wrapping, producer William Vince passed away. During post-production work, Gilliam was hit by a car and broke his back.

It's a minor miracle that "Parnassus" was even finished. That it's Gilliam's best film since 1991's "The Fisher King" should be considered a sign the gods are smiling on him, despite his misfortune.

The subtext of this film couldn't be clearer coming from a 69-year-old director whose battles with the studio system are legendary: It's about an ancient mystic who believes storytelling is what binds the universe together, spinning his tales for a world that has stopped listening.

Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) lives like a sideshow carny, travelling around London in a ramshackle wagon/stage/domicile, using psychic powers to offer passers-by a chance to wander through his mind, where their own imaginations can run wild.

Gilliam uses computer-generated imagery to depict the fantastic worlds conjured inside Parnassus' brain, where ladders rise miles high into the sky, or giant jewels twinkle like celestial stars lassoed and pulled down to earth.

Like James Cameron with "Avatar," Gilliam uses computers to paint his screen with images impossible to render with live action, rather than letting special effects overwhelm his story. It's like watching one of Gilliam's "Monty Python" morphing animations brought to life.

Joining the doctor's troupe are his teen daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole), who yearns to give up vagabond life for hearth and home; Anton (Andrew Garfield), the emcee who secretly adores Valentina; and Percy (Verne Troyer), a pint-sized figure whose supernatural pedigree is at least as complicated as Parnassus'.

Troyer delivers a great line early on, when asked where they are: "Geographically, in the northern hemisphere; socially, on the margins; and narratively, with some way to go."

One night after a typically disastrous performance, they stumble upon a man hanging from a noose under a bridge. Discovering him to be somehow still alive, they soon incorporate the amnesiatic fellow into their stage act.

This man, whose name is eventually found to be Tony, is played by Ledger. The obvious question everyone will have is how much the movie suffers from having its star unable to complete much of his filming. And the truth is, not as much as you'd think.

Gilliam, who co-write the script with Charles McKeown, cleverly uses Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to play Tony during scenes inside the Imaginarium. Since reality is bendable in there, and Tony's loyalties remain in doubt, it actually seems logical to have his physical likeness in flux.

The plot is driven by a wager between Parnassus and the Devil himself, Mr. Nick (a sly and scrumptious Tom Waits), with Valentina's soul at stake. The doctor will spin tales of light and goodness, and Nick of lust and fulfillment, to see which they choose.

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" can best be described as Terry Gilliam's most Gilliam-esque movie. It's fun, playful, shocking, silly, and bursting with originality.

3.5 stars