Video review: "Hidden Figures"

Math is at the center of “Hidden Figures,” a historical drama about forgotten African-American women who were pivotal to putting the first Americans into space. “By the numbers,” though, is also an apt description of the predictable plot and characters who seem based more on algorithms than actual people.

Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe play three women who were “computers” for NASA in the early 1960s – at a time when that term referred to someone who was really good at math rather than a machine. Katherine Johnson (Henson) is the standout genius of the bunch, who can see past the numbers into the “deep math” consequences of what they represent.

Monáe plays Mary Jackson, the young upstart of the trio, and Spencer is Dorothy Vaughan, who acts as manager of the computers but doesn’t get the title, pay or respect from her white supervisor (Kirsten Dunst) she deserves. The blacks and whites are kept segregated in different buildings, right down to water fountains and restrooms labeled “colored.”

Kevin Costner plays Al Harrison, the NASA man in charge of the number-crunchers. He finds his all-white-and-male eggheads aren’t up to the task, so Johnson is conscripted to join his team, with predictable tensions from the engineers. (Jim Parsons plays the chief antagonist.)

The actors give a good account of themselves, especially Henson. But it all unfolds so unsurprisingly -- the meek Henson finally having her big hear-me-roar speech; Harrison taking a sledgehammer to the “colored” signs when he realizes racism is hindering scientific progress; Vaughan tackling the newfangled machines from IBM and earning new esteem.

Theodore Melfi, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Allison Schroeder, gives us an interesting and powerful piece of history. But the story spools out in a manner that’s strictly 1-2-3.

Bonus features as good. There’s a feature-length commentary track featuring Melfi and Henson; deleted scenes; a gallery of production stills; a making-of documentary, “It All Adds Up;” plus a featurette on filming on location in Georgia.

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Review: "McFarfland, USA"

"McFarland, USA” is about as formulaic as movie can be. But despite the fact that every single step of the plot seems preordained, it’s a well-made film with some genuinely moving moments. This falls firmly into the “inspiring sports drama” category, with Kevin Costner playing a coach who takes a ragtag bunch of misfits and turns them into a championship cross-country team.

It follows the “Hoosiers” template pretty closely, with the coach being a down-on-his luck type whose past transgressions have banished him to the remotest outpost to ply his trade. There’s a Jimmy Chitwood type, the gifted standout who has to be wrangled into joining/not quitting the team. And the one kid who has a lot of heart but not much talent, and the lippy student who comes to respect the coach, and so on.

The twist is that it takes place in a dreadfully poor California town made up almost entirely of Mexican-Americans who toil in the fields as pickers. These boys get up at 4:15 in the morning to go pick vegetables for a few hours, go to school, and then pick some more. Everyone they know is a picker, they assume they will be too, and thus a high school diploma is the only thing that’s ever been demanded of them.

Winning? It’s a foreign concept.

Costner plays the new football coach, Jim White -- and boy, does he get ridiculed for that name because, y’know, he’s white! The kids dub him “Blanco” and he soon loses his football job to a rival. But White notices that these kids who work in the sun all day can run fast and long, and pitches the idea of a cross-country team.

At first the boys deride cross-country as a sport for rich white schools, but eventually they come around because, of course, otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie. Niki Caro directed from an original screenplay-by-committee (Christopher Cleveland, Bettina Gilois and Grant Thompson are credited) based on a true story.

Carlos Pratts is solid as Thomas, the best runner who has trouble at home from an abusive father who thinks sports are a waste of time. Maria Bello plays Mrs. White, in a conventional sort of role in which she rides her husband for not spending more time with his family. And Morgan Saylor plays their teen daughter, Julie, who struggles to adapt to her new circumstances.

The movie is as much about the White clan assimilating into a community in which they are the outsiders as it is about sports. At first Coach White is dismissive of the school and his prospects of finding success there, and xenophobic about the young men in bandanas and low-riders whom he assumes to be gangbangers. He’s desperate to get out, but eventually settles into the rhythms of the neighborhood. Costner is his usual steady, assuring self.

In a sense, this movie has much in common with another famous Costner film about a representative of white mainstream society getting lost in a foreign culture and discovering he belongs there -- “Dances With Corredors,” perhaps?

“McFarland, USA” won’t win any points for originality. But it’s got comfortable, naturalistic performances and a few stirring moments to tickle your tear ducts.

Reeling Backward: "Silverado" (1985)

Emmett: "Blind Pete always said you'd hang. I guess tomorrow at dawn, he'll be proved right."
Sheriff Langston: "10 a.m."
Emmett: "Oh, right. I always thought they did it at dawn."

"Silverado" is a film that I've never quite been able to peg. All I know is that I've always adored it.

Made in the dark days of the Western between "The Wild Bunch" and "Unforgiven," it would appear at first glance to be an homage to the genre. Made by and starring Baby Boomers, it reads like a bunch of kids playing dress-up and mimicking the shootin' and ridin' of John Wayne and other cowboys they themselves watched on film and TV.

The plot is essentially a pastiche of every great Western trope -- revenge duel, cattlemen vs. farmers, a corrupt lawman, a hero in a black hat, a pretty woman who tempts a wandering soul into settling down, a young boy who idolizes the gunman who's known only a life of tragedy. There's even a modernist angle with a proud African-American standing up to a bunch of racist cowpokes threatening his family.

(About the only thing it's missing is a subplot involving Indians, of which there's not a one.)

And yet, director Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote the script with his brother Mark, often lets the proceedings wander into the territory of parody. The part I've never figured out is whether it's intentional or not.

Consider the quote above. That's just this side of pure comedy. When the cowpoke Emmett delivers the last line, that's not the stern pronouncement of a well-worn cowhand who's ridden everywhere and seen it all. It's the postmodernist quip of a guy in 1985 making a pun out of every movie he's seen that included a hanging.

(For that matter, who the hell is Blind Pete? He's referenced twice in the movie without any other information being provided. Presumably he's another familiar Western type, the crazy/smart old codger. This way Kasdan gets to summon his image without having to bother with actually creating and casting a character.)

Emmett is played by Scott Glenn, one of my all-time favorite "That Guy" movie actors. With his lean, creased face, rangy physique, squinty eyes and gruff voice, he was born looking like he wandered out of a Hollywood Western poster. Emmett has just finished doing five years in prison for manslaughter after killing the patriarch of the McKendrick clain, the local cattle barons. Taciturn and tough, Emmett comes closest of the film's four cowboys to the classic Western hero archetype.

Technically Emmett is the main character, though Glenn receives second billing to Kevin Kline. He plays Paden, a funny/sad gambler/gunman with a wise disposition and fatalistic bent. When we first meet him he's been robbed of everything he owns and left in his longjohns to die in the desert. After being rescued by Emmett, he proceeds to recover his beloved horse, hat and gun in subsequent shoot-outs with his robbers. Paden is a cynic who often takes on lost causes, and a romantic whose passions drift like a tumbleweed, until they stop in the most unexpected places.

Like Kasdan himself, Kline was just coming off the huge success of "The Big Chill." Jeff Goldblum was also in both movies, relishing a small part as turncoat card-dealer Slick. Technically, Kevin Costner was too, though as is well known in Hollywood lore, Costner's role as the dead friend being grieved was left on the "Chill"-y cutting room floor.

Perhaps that's why the role of Jake, Emmett's callow hot-head of a brother, is so deliberately showy -- Kasdan, perhaps sad over depriving an actor of his breakout role, decided to provide him another. All Jake really does is kiss girls, shoot bad guys with his fancy two-gun rig, and smile at the camera. Soon Costner was landing leads in big productions like "The Untouchables" and "No Way Out," and he was off to the races.

Danny Glover plays expert rifleman Mal, just returned from working in the slaughterhouses of Chicago, only to find his family plot overrun with McKendrick cattle, his mother dead of illness, his father soon murdered, and his sister run off to Silverado to become a whore. He gets a nice introductory scene where he's refused a drink of whiskey in a saloon because of his skin, and takes down three fat-faced white guys who try to enforce the unwritten rule.

He's run out of town by Sheriff Langston, a stiff Brit played for comic relief by John Cleese, who was also planning to hang Jake on trumped-up charges. When the boys break out of town, Cleese delivers the funniest line in the movie: After chasing them into a trap where they're pinned down by Mal's marksmanship, Langston decides to abruptly give up the chase. "Today my jurisdiction ends here," he announces, turning his horse around.

Cleese also got very high billing in the credits unwarranted by his limited screen time, though even he's beaten out by Rosanna Arquette. Billed third, she has maybe four total minutes in the movie, and only two dialogue scenes totaling 119 words. (Yes, I counted.) The character exists solely as a sweet-faced lure to the dusty rawhides who dream of a better, settled life.

If Arquette provides an unsatisfactory female presence, then Linda Hunt makes up any difference. Playing Stella, the pint-sized manager of The Midnight Star, the high-end saloon that bears her nickname, she has a small but solid role as a symbol of decency and workaday toughness. Accustomed to serving on the fringes of other people's indulgences, she's surprised to find herself the object of unexpected affections.

Hunt, having recently won an Oscar -- for playing a character of the opposite gender, still the only performer ever to do so -- shows what you can do with a tiny, tidy role that's well-written and splendidly played.

The rest of the cast is filled out by Brian Dennehy as Cobb, the smiling, winking bandit-turned-sheriff who's firmly in the McKendrick pocket; Jeff Fahey as the local crazy-eyed killer; Lynn Whitfield as Mal's sister Rae; Thomas Wilson Brown as Augie, Emmett and Jake's wide-eyed nephew; the inimitable James Gammon as a gravel-voiced outlaw leader; and Thomas Wilson Brown, a generic and throwaway villain as McKendrick.

Everything in "Silverado" is filmed in a precious way as if trying to recreate the best moments of classic Westerns. The movie opens with a shot from inside a tiny cabin out the doorway into the grand, valley-filled landscape beyond, a fairly deliberate borrowing from "The Searchers." The booming musical score by Bruce Broughton, replete with trumpets and other brassy brass, earned an Oscar nomination, as did the sound crew.

(It was Broughton's song, "Alone Yet Not Alone," that got an Oscar nomination for Best Song last year but got disqualified under some arcane rules of the Academy. Broughton sent out a few dozen emails to his friends in the movie biz asking them to give it a listen, which the Academy disallowed as "campaigning." Yet the annual suck-up-fest perpetrated for whatever Weinstein movie on tap trundles on.)

So is "Silverado" an homage, a parody or something else entirely? After seeing it again for perhaps the dozenth time, I confess I still haven't decided. My gut tells me it's a serious paean, a recreation of the cowboys-and-Indians games (minus the Indians) Kasdan & Co. grew up playing.

But then I watch again scenes like Emmett practicing his gunplay, and I wonder still. There's one part where he's aiming at a cactus plant with his rifle from maybe 50 yards away. Not only does he hit the plant, he shoots off individual spines, one at a time. This is so absurdly ridiculous that I can't believe the filmmakers taking it seriously, or imagining anyone in the audience doing so, either. It's stuff like this that makes me think the movie has just gone momentarily goofy.

Sometimes I laugh at "Silverado," and sometimes I just sit back and admire its fanboy, fetishistic take on the Western. What I do know is, whenever I watch this film, I'm grinning as wide as the dusty plains.

Review: "Draft Day"

"Draft Day" has a reliable veteran star (Kevin Costner) and an old-hand director (Ivan Reitman) but a pair of rookie screenwriters, and it shows.

Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman fall into the newbie trap of thinking more is more. They've got a great, uncomplicated premise: the general manager of the Cleveland Browns football team is desperately scrambling to make a splash on NFL Draft Day, furiously working the phones and making seemingly desperate trades as the minutes tick by.

Made with the full cooperation of the National Football League and ESPN, plus the participation of dozens of football luminaries and media figures, it has the authentic feel of a peek behind doors than remain largely closed to fans. Now, that's an intriguing enough premise out of which to milk plenty of drama, laughs and tears.

But the screenwriters keep going, and going ... and then they go a little further. They pile challenge after interpersonal challenge atop the head of their protagonist, Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner). It's supposed to ratchet up the tension, but the story ends up with so many distractions it's hard for the main narrative to gain traction till the end.

Start with the fact that he's got an overbearing team owner (Frank Langella) who'd like nothing better than to can his GM if the day doesn't play out right. And Sonny's dad, the legendary coach of the Browns, died last week ... after Sonny fired him the previous season. He's got his brittle mother (Ellen Burstyn) butting into his affairs. Plus he's been having an affair on the sly with an underling (Jennifer Garner), and now she wants to be more than the secret girlfriend ... oh, and they've just learned they're having a baby, too.

And that's before we even get into the minutia of the actual football draft, with the various potential players, their parents and agents, and assorted intrigues.

Sonny suspects the sure-fire #1 quarterback (Josh Pence) is a bust. He's rather pick the lower-profile defensive player of proven character (Chadwick Boseman). There's also pressure to choose a sleek running back (Arian Foster) who's the son of a favorite Browns player.

The movie finally comes through after a very slow start, and the last 45 minutes or so are extremely engaging as the actual draft drama plays out. Just when you think he's done, Sonny whips out another card from up his sleeve.

Frankly, Costner is probably about 15 years too old for this role. (A maverick guy in his mid-40s contemplating fatherhood and putting down roots is fascinating; pushing 60, it's just pathetic.) But he brings a well-worn, no-nonsense solidity to the role. His Sonny feels put-upon and doesn't carry a big ego, but there's a well-tended fire in his belly. He's a naturally cautious guy desperate to throw one long bomb and hope for the best.

I also enjoyed Denis Leary as Vince Penn, the new-ish coach of the Browns who's constantly knocking heads with his boss. Puckish and manipulative, a guy who clearly thinks he's the big fish in what he considers a small pond, Vince has his own ideas about who to draft. And if that means throwing his GM under the bus to get his way, then that's what winners do.

Reitman, better known for comedy and lacking a genuine hit for 20 years, hits his stride just when the material does, when the actual draft starts. You've got that built-in pressure of having to make your pick before the time runs out or getting leapfrogged by other teams, a tension that Reitman uses well to his advantage.

(That made sound like showbiz hooey, but it's actually happened a couple of times in recent years.)

This movie would have been much better served, though, by winnowing down the side characters and subplots and focusing on the meat of what is a really compelling story. That's playing to your strengths, something every good veteran should know.

Review: "3 Days to Kill"

"Is Dad a badass?"
"He's done some things, yes."

"3 Days to Kill" is an odd flick, but not an un-entertaining one. On its face it looks like another one of these action-thrillers where an older assassin/spy proves he's still got it by mowing through an entire crowd of younger hit men -- by association also showing that the aging movie star portraying him still has some juice, too.

Liam Neeson relaunched his career this way, and now there are so many knockoffs it's practically become its own genre: Geezer Badassery.

But one thing joining all these films is their relentless seriousness and bravado, usually culminating in some scene where the protagonist makes a stern declaration about how he's such a force to be reckoned with, and you better not mess with him. (Predictably, the baddies never heed this advice, otherwise these movies would all end at the 20-minute mark.)

Kevin Costner doesn't do any of that in "3 Days to Kill." Like many of the other characters he's played, Ethan Renner is loose, easygoing and doesn't take himself too seriously. He's grim when his work requires him to be, but his default mode is a joshing sort of self-deprecating charm.

For instance, other characters in the movie repeatedly pester him about his casual dress, since everyone knows CIA assassins and their ilk are supposed to wear skinny black suits, instead of the slouchy chinos-and-bomber-jacket ensemble Ethan prefers. Heck, he doesn't even shave much, and mostly appears to be just going through the motions until retirement.

Of course, Ethan is dying from brain cancer, which has gotten into his lungs and caused a nasty cough, not to mention debilitating woozy spells that are kind of a hindrance when your trade involves people shooting at you. After his latest job goes bad, he's cut loose from the CIA with a tiny pension and barely a fare-thee-well.

That's a pretty dour setup for a movie. But director McG and screenwriters Luc Besson and Adi Hasak defy expectations by making the rest of the movie funny, jazzy and even kind of goofy. "3 Days to Kill" is essentially the comedy version of "Taken."

Ethan's goal with his few remaining months is to reconnect with the wife and daughter he abandoned so many years ago. But his daughter Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld) is lippy and combative, and has mastered that teen skill of humiliating their parents through sheer exasperatedness at their uncoolness. Her mother, Christine (Connie Nielsen), wants nothing to do with Ethan, and soon departs their Paris home for a business trip.

Then Vivi shows up. A young boss at the CIA played by Amber Heard, Vivi is a femme fatale who always appears in a different stunning outfit and new hairdo. She claims to have an experimental cure that could save Ethan or at least extend his life, which she's willing to share if he'll hunt down a mysterious arms dealer named The Wolf (Richard Sammel) for her -- which was the same job that blew up in Ethan's face.

Costner and Heard have a fun, antagonistic byplay, with her the brainy manipulator and him the old-school operator whose usefulness is fleeting. It's clear he halfway suspects the miracle juice she pumps into his arm his bogus, but he figures he doesn't have much to lose. She keeps coming on to him, though more as a power move than real seduction.

The running joke of the story is that Ethan's assassination mission keeps getting interrupted by the necessities of his return to a semblance of normal life. Zooey calls him on the phone, interrupting his interrogation of various lowlifes. It's hard to make a guy think you'll torture him to death if you're also asking him for pasta sauce recipes.

One of these is Marc Andréoni as a Middle Eastern wheel man for The Wolf. Ethan keeps kidnapping him and sticking him in the trunk of his car, but in between punches solicits his advice as a fellow father of teenage girls. It almost becomes a Laurel and Hardy routine.

Ethan also returns to find his apartment occupied by a large family of African squatters, who welcome him with open arms because they know archaic French laws won't allow them to be evicted. The deadly master assassin finds himself powerless at the hands of their warm invitations and smiles, and ends up enlisting the youngest son as his errand boy.

Rounding out the cast is Tómas Lemarquis as The Albino, the chief henchman of The Wolf. You know the villains are nefarious when they go by declarative titles instead of names. Do their close friends call them "The"?

Speaking of idiot nicknames, McG -- who insists on going by his frat-boy moniker instead of his given name, Joseph McGinty Nichol -- delivers crisp action scenes with a lot of spatial integrity, so that we understand where everyone is and what they're doing. Even the hand-to-hand combat doesn't devolve into a flurry if hyper-fast edits the eye can't track, which seems to be the norm these days.

I especially liked the sound design for the film. Gunfire is accompanied by deep staccato bursts, like a pile driver thudding into concrete. You can feel the vibration in your bones. Though, in grand action movie tradition, Ethan's gun clip appears to contain dozens of bullets.

The juxtaposition of these heart-gripping shootouts with the light, funny parts of the movie works better than you'd think. Ethan is a guy whom death surrounds like a magnetic field, yet this movie isn't about him riding a roller coaster into the grave. He regards killing as neither repellent or intoxicating, but simply part and parcel of the profession he's chosen.

The irony is now that he wants to leave that life behind, he must wallow in its excesses to obtain a shot at something more. The filmmakers opt to emphasize the ridiculousness of his situation rather than milk it for cheap thrills and quips after the bad guys have bought it.

Just shy of 60, Kevin Costner is still much the same performer as he was when he broke out a quarter-century past. His face is seamed and jowly now, but he retains that ornery twinkle and understated comedic timing. Even though "3 Days to Kill" chooses a very different route from similar films, it still accomplishes its task of proving its star has what it takes.

Video review: "Man of Steel"

Rebooting a superhero franchise is a trickier business than it sounds. People remember the glory of “The Dark Knight” and forget how clunky “Batman Begins” was. Spider-Man fizzled out with one group and came back stronger with another cast and crew. They tried twice to get the Hulk off the ground and only succeeded by making him a supporting player in the Avengers.

Hollywood attempted to bring back Superman a few years ago, and the the movie was just OK, so now they’ve tried again, and the results are similarly so-so.

Don’t flog “Man of Steel” for a lack of effort: there are big, grasping ambitions contained in this version starring Brit actor Henry Cavill. Too many, in fact.

Director Zack Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer’s unwisely chose to shoehorn two movies worth of storytelling into one sprawling narrative and ended up with a film showing all the symptoms of a split personality.

Here Clark Kent spends the first half of the movie as a demi-god alienated (literally) from the rest of his world, and the second half trading epic haymakers with evil General Zod (Michael Shannon), a militaristic bully from his home world of Krypton.

Both halves work decently well on their own, but don’t mesh together in any way that satisfies. We’re missing the bridge between the two, where Clark adopts the persona of Superman and takes on the mantle of humanity’s noble protector.

(The original “Superman” from 1978 faced similar issues, and chose to shoot the two movies back-to-back, giving Zod and his henchman their own sequel to fill out.)

Personally, I preferred the first portion where Superman must find his own way between the paths laid out by his two father figures, his Kryptonian dad (Russell Crowe) and his adoptive family on Earth, with Kevin Costner making a strong turn as Pa Kent.

“Man of Steel” isn’t a bad movie, but it certainly doesn’t soar like it should have.

Video extras are quite good, though as is often the case, the best stuff costs more. The DVD version comes only with three featurettes on the mythology of Superman, training regimen for the action scenes and a rundown of Krypton technology.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray level and  you add “Journey of Discovery: Creating ‘Man of Steel,’” a feature-length making-of documentary film. You also get “Planet Krypton,” which goes into the history and sociology of Superman’s doomed home planet.

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Review: "Man of Steel"

A grand, and grandly disappointing venture, "Man of Steel" reaches for the sun in trying to reset the Superman franchise, then plummets to earth in a storm of hyperactive CGI action sequences and overstuffed plotting.

It begins with hope and even a touch of awe, a story of fathers and sons, less about a man who can lift buildings than a wayward soul seeking to find a home on an alien world. But then the bad guy arrives, even before the main character has had a chance to establish himself, and the movie is overtaken by standard villainous sneering and apocalyptic dooms.

This film, directed by Zack Snyder and written by David S. Goyer, has a couple of main problems. The most obvious is that it's two movies worth of material shoehorned into one. And this leads directly to the other:
Superman never really gets to be Superman.

Oh, Henry Cavill does eventually don the familiar blue-and-red costume -- though, like everything else from the dead planet Krypton in the movie, it's reimagined with a hard-edged militaristic texture, less apparel than armor. The British actor has a quietly commanding presence onscreen; he believably personifies a demigod.

(Though his lean, almost emaciated face seems incongruously perched atop the mountain of muscles he packed onto his torso for this role.)

No, what I mean is that Clark Kent, aka Kal-El of Krypton, spends the first half of the movie trying to find out who he is, and the second half trading epic haymakers with his enemies -- laying waste to half of Metropolis in the process. There's a missing second act where Superman reveals himself to the world, earns their trust, and is embraced as humanity's champion.

Indeed, some of the film's most powerful scenes involve Clark receiving tutelage from his two fathers -- Jonathan Kent (a strong Kevin Costner), the Kansas farmer who found his crashed spaceship and raised him up, and Jor-El (Russell Crowe), the enlightened Krypton scientist who dispatched him as a babe to Earth to be mankind's savior.

(Underlining the notion of Kal-El-as-Christ, in this version of the Superman mythology he doesn't declare his extraordinary abilities until the age of 33, the same as a certain other celestial pilgrim.)

There's a push and pull between the two men's teachings: Jor-El (who communicates through a holographic representation of his consciousness) daring his natural-born son to embrace his potential for greatness, constantly testing his limits, while Kent urges caution and forbearance, forcing his adopted child to absorb the pain of being an outcast rather than inflicting society with a knowledge they're not ready to bear.

Really, this is all the film needs in terms of narrative to take flight, and for awhile at least, it soars.

Things are complicated by the infiltration of a nosy journalist, Lois Lane (Amy Adams), who comes asking questions about a mystery man who turns up here and there, performing amazing acts before disappearing. Clark and Lois form the beginnings of an important friendship, and we expect her to be the vehicle through which he emerges to the public.

But then General Zod arrives, and the quiet power the movie has built up is blasted away by a cacophony of explosions and destruction -- not to mention Hans Zimmer's bombastic musical score.

A usurper imprisoned by the Krypton leadership for an attempted coup, Zod sees himself as the true redeemer of his people, with dreams of establishing a new generation on this planet. (Of course, the existing species must go.)

Zod has about a dozen followers, each of whom replicates Superman's powers in Earth's atmosphere, or nearly so. And he's got an obligatory end-of-the-world plan ... actually, two: terraform the planet into a copy of Krypton, and some screwy twaddle about extracting the entire genetic plans for their race from Kal-El's cells.

Michael Shannon is terrific as Zod, a combination of arrogance and perseverance that allows him to justify unspeakable cruelty. And their fight scenes have a certain kinetic urgency, sometimes overindulged by Snyder, as their bodies slam through buildings like flotsam spun out of a tornado.

But this doesn't change the fact that Zod belongs in a separate movie, where his malevolence can sprawl and take root. Here, he shows up and immediately sets about his destructive plans, like a Cliff's Notes version of a cinematic scoundrel.

Superman may be capable of many astounding feats. But one thing he can't do is turn two films worth of storytelling into a single good one.

Review: "The Company Men"

Something has gone seriously askew in America.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the heads of a company would be ashamed to show their faces if it performed so poorly they were forced to let workers go. CEOs were well paid, but did not earn 700 times his or her average employee. When times were lean, sacrifices were shared around -- as were the fruits when money rolled in.

Now, companies still making a decent profit  lay off 30-year employees to jigger the stock price a little bit higher. The top dogs demand and receive bonuses that could've paid the salaries of hundreds of people let go. Executives decorate their offices in mahogany and Degas paintings, while working stiffs watch as their houses are foreclosed.

"The Company Men" is about the big and the little guys. It's a searing portrait of a corporate culture utterly lacking in human values and the people who are rolled over by it. It's an effective drama, even if writer/director John Wells is occasionally a bit heavy-handed with his us-versus-them shtick.

But in these dark times a lot of people who have lost jobs will see this movie, and recognize those feelings of resentfulness, anger and -- most excruciatingly -- sudden anonymity.

"You know the worst part? The world didn't stop," one canned veteran wails. "My life ended and nobody noticed."

Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is a rising star, the regional sales director for GTX, a former shipbuilding company that has diversified into a behemoth. He is 37 years old, makes $160,000 a year, drives a Porsche, has the prototypical mini-mansion in the Boston suburbs and a wife and two kids.

Bobby thought he'd be safe from the latest round of cuts, after having been given the personal assurance of a patron high up in the company. But he gets pink-slipped, and the scene where he carries his belongings to the parking lot, and sees a dozen others holding the same cardboard boxes, is a punch in the gut.

At first, Bobby is in denial about his situation. He thinks he'll have another job lined up long before his severance runs out. He insists on paying exorbitant golf club fees and dry cleaning bills while the mortgage teeters because, as he tells his wife Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt), "I need to look successful."

But the hiring market is a bleak slog of unreturned phone calls, long waits in waiting rooms, and interviewers who don't even bother to stop eating while they talk to you.

"The Company Men" is sprinkled with a raft of strong supporting performances. Tommy Lee Jones give an Oscar-worthy turn as Gene McClary, who helped built GTX from the ground up but has become disillusioned by its dehumanizing slide. His partner, James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson), insists they're not responsible for employees losing their jobs because the market demands it.

"We work for the stockholders now!" he thunders.

Chris Cooper has an almost feral energy as an upper-level exec who clawed his way up from the factory floor, only to face professional extinction. A job placement consultant coldly advises him to dye his gray hair and omit any mention of his Vietnam military service from his resume.

Maria Bello plays the seemingly heartless human resources chief, who main job seems to be telling people theirs no longer exists.

I especially liked Kevin Costner as Jack, Bobby's brother-in-law. A blue-collar contractor who used to needle Bobby about assisting in the corporate migration of jobs overseas, it's the sort of small, un-showy role that forms the connective tissue of movies like this, and which stars usually take a pass on.

Will people be too depressed this winter to go see a movie that depicts what a soul-crushing affair it is to lose your job? If a solid, worthy film like "The Company Men" fails to get hired by audiences, we're all doomed.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Waterworld"

Watching "The Book of Eli," it got me to thinking about other spectacularly dumb post-apocalyptic films. "Waterworld" has very similar themes, even though in "Eli" people constantly fight over water, whereas in the 1995 Kevin Costner movie there's far too much of it.

I hadn't seen "Waterworld" since it came out in theaters nearly 15 years ago, and it was actually a better movie than I remembered. Yes, it is at times a silly, stupid experience. But it seems to recognize itself for what it is, and has a bit of fun with it. Unlike "Eli," which I'm less forgiving toward because it's so self-serious.

As is often the case, Roger Ebert said it best: "'Waterworld' is a decent futuristic action picture with some great sets, some intriguing ideas, and a few images that will stay with me. It could have been more, it could have been better, and it could have made me care about the characters. It's one of those marginal pictures you're not unhappy to have seen, but can't quite recommend."

There was much ridiculing of Costner's get-up in the movie. He plays the Mariner, a mysterious loner who travels a world completely covered in water (or so everyone thinks). He wears a strange array of leather vest, striped pants, long hair pulled back in a high knot, and various dangly bits and weapons.

The Mariner cruises around in a fancy trimaran that he's outfitted with all sorts of contraptions so he can pilot her alone, raising the sails and doing slick maneuvers and such. Like the classic loner of this type of films he's a man of violence but not a bad heart, who wants to be left alone but finds himself caring for some townsfolk he stumbles across.

Since there's no towns, an atoll will have to do. The Mariner puts in there to do some trading, but gets assaulted when he's found to be a mutant. He has gills behind his ears, webbed toes and can swim and breathe underwater. He's about to be executed when the Smokers attack.

The equivalent of the roving gangs of marauders from "The Road Warrior," the Smokers kill and destroy in the pursuit of the few remaining natural resources: Fresh water, dirt, food, etc. They're led by Deacon, the bald-headed villain played by Dennis Hopper.

Deacon gets his eye blown out by the Mariner during the attack on the atoll, and spends the rest of the movie wearing a jury-rigged patch over it -- but not before a hilariously creepy scene in which the Smoker doctor tries to implant a huge fake-looking prosthetic eye into the gaping socket. Hopper is a real hoot in the movie, seeming to realize what a big joke it all is.

The civilians are Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn), a comely lass, and Enola (Tina Majorino), a young girl with a strange tattoo on her back that turns out to be a map to the last dry land. Deacon wants the map, so he sends out his goons after the Mariner and his passengers.

Like the MacGuffin of the Bible in "The Book of Eli," Enola's tattoo isn't well thought out as a plot device. It's a very simple map, with a big globe and some latitude and longitude numbers, that could easily be copied down after a brief glance. There's no need to actually have the girl in your possession to use the knowledge.

Also, it's made explicit that Enola originally came from dry land, and must have been sent out by her parents/protectors into the watery void. Why? Two bodies are found when they finally reach dry land, peacefully nestled side by side, and somebody says something to the effect that they must have known they were going to die. From what, illness? Both at the same time? Seems unlikely. And even so, if you're going to give your tiny daughter a tattoo so she can find her way back, it's not very helpful to put it on her back where she can't see it.

Director Kevin Reynolds, who previously teamed with Costner on "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," stages some nice action sequences in the days before CGI. The film went massively over budget, and various stories even claim that Reynolds walked off the set, or was fired, due to conflicts with his star, who directed the final scenes himself. Whatever the case, their friendship and professional relationship ended with "Waterworld."

2 stars