Ill-Informed Gadfly

Jeff Bridges inhabits his roles with preternatural ease. When he’s at his best, you see neither calculation nor artifice. In “Crazy Heart,” Bridges doesn’t just play a rundown, alcoholic country singer named Bad Blake. He is Bad Blake. Actor and character show equal parts grit and grace. When he wins the Oscar, it will be richly deserved. In more than four decades of screen acting, Bridges has delivered great performances in better movies: “The Last Picture Show,” “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “Fearless,” even “The Big Lebowski.” But with “Crazy Heart,” you can simply bask in his brilliance, because there’s nothing else remarkable about the film. It is a massive cliché, entirely lacking in insight or surprise. Bad used to be famous, but now he drives himself around the Southwest in a beat-up Suburban, playing roadside bars and bowling alleys, perpetually soused. He grants an interview to a music writer for a local paper, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal with her characteristic grating snideness, and they begin a wary love affair. Not much else happens, at least nothing you can’t predict. Robert Duvall turns up as an elderly Texas eccentric and complements Bridges with his offhand mastery. Colin Farrell isn’t quite as comfortable as a country star and former protege of Bad’s, but then Farrell rarely looks comfortable. I often enjoy his fidgety energy, but he could learn something from Bridges, who’s equally at peace charming an audience or vomiting in a toilet. “Crazy Heart” simply lets him be, and writer-director Scott Cooper can be proud of that, if little else.

“Edge of Darkness” gives Mel Gibson his first major acting role in more than seven years and keeps him firmly within his comfort zone. Once again, he plays a man who endures the brutal and senseless loss of a loved one. His lively eyes and quick smile give way to a cold, expressionless stare. The audience girds for a signature Mel Gibson revenge fantasy, marked by sickening violence and cloying sentimentality. But then something unexpected happens, as long as you’re unfamiliar with the BBC series “Edge of Darkness” is based on: It blossoms into a nifty film noir. Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a Boston detective who sees his daughter shotgunned to death. Craven’s quest for revenge reveals an intricate mystery, an abyss of secrets and lies. Like the best noirs, “Edge of Darkness” evokes a world consumed by paranoia and moral rot. It even has nuclear energy as a plot point, a charmingly retro touch that recalls the fine 1957 noir “Kiss Me Deadly.” Director Martin Campbell shrewdly casts the right actors for this sort of genre piece, men whose faces instantly signal their characters’ aims. The best of the bunch is Ray Winstone as a shadowy fixer who experiences an existential crisis while looking into Craven’s case. If only Campbell had contributed a modicum of visual flair, the movie could be a real knockout — at least for most of its running time. In the final reel, “Edge of Darkness” strains credulity, and Campbell undermines the appropriately bleak ending by tugging at the heartstrings in a way the old noirs never did. I’m sure Gibson approves, though.

“A Single Man” is about what I expected from a movie directed by a fashion designer. I don’t mean it’s all about the clothes, although the clothes are important, and Colin Firth looks fabulous in monochromatic “Mad Men” attire. What I mean is that director Tom Ford, the former Gucci designer, has no background in film, and it shows through his cavalier treatment of the medium. Whatever Ford feels like trying, he tries. He messes with the color timing; he uses super-slow motion almost fetishistically. If he feels like shooting a scene in black-and-white, he does — it doesn’t signify anything other than Ford finds it pretty. And it’s important to note that none of this monkeying around makes “A Single Man” any less of a chore to watch. Adapted from a novel by Christopher Isherwood, it takes place on a single day in 1962. Firth plays George Falconer, an English professor mourning the death of his longtime boyfriend and preparing halfheartedly to commit suicide. It’s a sort of uncloseted “Mrs. Dalloway,” a long interior monologue in which mundane events become fraught with meaning. Firth, sure to be nominated for an Oscar, is in top form. In public, George maintains a guarded exterior that jells with Firth’s buttoned-down persona, but the actor also gets a welcome chance to cut loose both physically and emotionally. He has superb chemistry with Matthew Goode, who plays George’s lover in limpid flashbacks that communicate the magnitude of his loss. But none of this is compelling stuff. Strong performances and a few affecting scenes can’t rescue “A Single Man” from its glamorous torpor.

For a filmmaker who routinely gets to work with massive budgets, Peter Jackson directs with an astonishing lyricism. He’s known for his mastery of digital effects, but he often does his best work in quieter moments, when he matches visceral intensity with emotional sensitivity. The opening reel of “The Lovely Bones” is as good as anything Jackson has ever done, good enough to recall the delirious energy of his 1994 masterpiece, “Heavenly Creatures.” Jackson crafts a mesmerizing snapshot of Pennsylvania teenager Susie Salmon’s life in the days leading up to her murder. She doesn’t stay alive for long, though, and that’s sad for more than just the obvious reasons. There’s a miscalculation at the center of “The Lovely Bones” that not even Jackson can overcome: A dead 14-year-old girl is not interesting. Nothing he draws up on his computer can bring dramatic urgency to Susie’s long stay in limbo. Having Susie tell the story of her murder and its aftermath was a shrewd gimmick for novelist Alice Sebold. But on film, Susie, played by Saoirse Ronan, becomes a distraction from the real story about her surviving relatives. The big names in the cast — Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci — are mostly just adequate. But as Susie’s younger sister, Rose McIver offers a fierce portrait of determination in the face of loss. “The Lovely Bones” is weird and wildly uneven, a domestic tragedy on an operatic scale, a supernatural thriller wrapped around an intimate study of grief. The mass audience will likely dismiss it. But I’d rather watch Jackson fail than most directors at their best.

With his smooth cheeks, stringy build and fluttering countertenor, Michael Cera could continue playing teenagers until he’s 30, although it probably wouldn’t be a good career move. The 21-year-old Canadian actor goes to the well again in “Youth in Revolt,” the first movie built entirely around his meek and fey persona. Say this for Cera: He’s a hard worker, and his sly, mumbling wit enlivens a pedestrian setup. He plays Nick Twisp, a sensitive young man of refined tastes who falls in love with the like-minded Sheenie, played with appealing self-possession by newcomer Portia Doubleday. When their budding romance hits a snag, Nick creates a rebellious alter ego to ensure his and Sheenie’s future happiness. Veteran boutique director Miguel Arteta crafts some fine scenes in the early going, and he’s in tune with Cera’s delicate sensibility. Nonetheless, it’s hard to view this slight and forgettable movie as anything but a baldly commercial enterprise. “Youth in Revolt” is set in California, but Arteta shot it on the cheap in Michigan, home to the nation’s most generous production incentives. He’s clearly working at the pleasure of the money men, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who hope to clear an easy profit on the backs of the moviegoers who put “Juno” and “Superbad” into the black. Rather than build a true ensemble around Cera, the Weinsteins rope in the likes of Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard and Justin Long for what amount to extended, unfunny cameos. There’s nothing inept about “Youth in Revolt,” and you likely won’t be bored, but it’s more commodity than movie.

If movies were made for adults more often, I think “Up in the Air” would be judged as merely above average. But since Hollywood caters mostly to adolescents or, at best, immature adults, you can’t fault discerning moviegoers for being seduced by a mainstream film with a glossy patina of good taste and respectability. “Up in the Air” also has timeliness on its side, a rare commodity from the slow-footed major studios. George Clooney plays the star employee of a firm that does the nasty job of firing people for companies that can’t stomach delivering the bad news in-house. Director Jason Reitman captures the anxiety we all feel at the prospect that our life’s work could be tossed aside. His best touch is to use actual laid-off workers to play most of the recipients of Clooney’s ax. Their regular-guy looks ground the movie, and the emotion in their voices comes easily as they re-enact the trauma of losing their jobs. Clooney skillfully suggests a similar undercurrent of panic as his character realizes he may have to give up his cherished frequent-flier lifestyle. Yet despite the elegant parallel between Clooney and his victims, “Up in the Air” never quite takes off. Reitman hits his story beats with an almost too surgical precision and has his actors race through artificially snappy dialogue. He’s a glib and manipulative filmmaker who manhandles the audience with clumsy third-act revelations — one of them predictable, the other so out of the blue that it’s disingenuous. As Oscar front-runners go, “Up in the Air” isn’t bad, but don’t mistake this proudly middlebrow movie for a work of art.

For all the technical innovations and visual splendor of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” it’s arguably the least inspired piece of storytelling of his remarkable career. Of course, similar things were said about “Titanic,” and you know how much good that did. I enjoyed “Titanic,” because once that big ship started to go down, the movie theater was the only place you wanted to be. The same is true in “Avatar” when Cameron’s lithe and luminous blue aliens ride ornery pterodactyls into battle, with the future of their civilization at stake. Cameron sets out to rewrite not only the plots of the westerns he steals from so liberally but all of human history. He imagines that on a distant planet, a technologically backward but spiritually enlightened indigenous population would have a real chance to ward off imperialists wielding guns, germs and steel. It’s a dunderheaded fantasy with little real-world relevance, no matter how many digs at the Bush administration Cameron throws in. “Avatar” takes place in the mid-22nd Century on the planet Pandora, home to a humanoid race known as the Na’vi. The tale centers on an archetypal but uninteresting human who “goes native” in the most spectacular way possible — through a living, breathing cipher that he controls with his brain. It’s a metaphor for the viewing experience: Cameron doesn’t want you to merely see the Na’vi, he wants you to become one. And on this level, he’s wildly successful. “Avatar” brings an entirely new world to the screen. It’s gorgeous and engrossing, despite the sometimes disorienting effect of digital 3-D. Even with his intellect on hiatus, Cameron has plenty of guts and heart. He’s a born entertainer.

“Invictus” is a movie about a South African rugby team that becomes more than just a rugby team. The audience learns this when the team captain tells his players, and I quote, “We’ve become more than just a rugby team.” Welcome to the cinema of Clint Eastwood. No Hollywood director could screw up an inspirational sports docudrama so badly — and garner awards and accolades in the process. “Invictus” is plodding, obvious and unspeakably dull. Eastwood chronicles Nelson Mandela’s embrace of the national team, the Springboks, in the months leading up to rugby’s World Cup in 1995. For many, the Springboks are despised symbols of apartheid, but Mandela sees the underdog team as a chance to unite the country and reassure whites that their new government won’t ruin what they hold sacred. Again, we know this because he says so, repeatedly. As Mandela, Morgan Freeman spends much of the movie staring into the middle distance and making starry-eyed pronouncements about forgiveness. He’s hardly an inspirational leader — he looks weary, both physically and intellectually. All the actors seem to be moving at half speed, their energy sapped by the lifeless screenplay and the declamatory line readings favored by Eastwood. As the Springboks’ captain, Matt Damon is a dutiful dullard. The rest of the players are indistinguishable from one another, and that includes the team’s lone black member. It’s astonishing that we never learn anything about his origins or his struggle for acceptance. “Invictus” might hold together as a middle school civics lesson, but as a movie, it’s a shambles.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is Wes Anderson’s masterpiece. It blends his recurring obsessions and idiosyncrasies with a rollicking adventure story, nuanced characters and a breathtaking visual scheme. Anderson uses stop-motion animation for his expansive adaptation of Roald Dahl’s slim tale, and it proves the ideal medium for a control-freak director who sometimes appears to be boxing up live actors inside dioramas. Ironically, the exacting requirements of stop-motion free him up: “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is fast-paced and kinetic. Anderson packs his frames with knickknacks and droll asides, but he maintains a light touch, refusing to linger on his frequently gorgeous, russet-hued images. He also achieves a remarkable alchemy between his tiny, furry clay figurines and the actors who voice them. At his worst, Anderson can reduce human beings to a collection of tics and neuroses. But the animals of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” are robust beasts of action. When they talk, they give uproarious voice to familiar concerns: marital friction, teen angst, illness, real estate. George Clooney is brilliant as the title character, abuzz with nervous energy, ego and salesmanship. Mr. Fox wears tailored corduroy sportcoats, writes a newspaper column and retains an attorney, a cautious badger voiced by Bill Murray. But he’s at his best when he embraces his wild side, stealing goods from farmers and improvising when his plans go awry. The consequences of his actions are often dire and lend the movie a surprising emotional heft. “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is enthralling cinema, raucous and deeply felt.

My friend Violet Glaze recommended this movie to my wife because she likes vampires: not “Twilight” ninnies but the sort that suck blood and have sex. Before we popped in the DVD, I had no idea that “The Hunger,” released in 1983 and said by some to be a cult classic, was also Tony Scott’s first feature. I don’t think Tony Scott ever sets out to make a cult classic, although he’s arguably done it several times unintentionally. (His second movie was “Top Gun.”)

I spend more time thinking and writing about Tony Scott than is probably healthy. I’m fascinated by his mix of gifts and shortcomings. And they’re all on display in his precocious debut. His signature is a mix of astonishing technical virtuosity and equally stunning vapidity. His work spills forth with impressive but empty visual flourishes. As I see it, there are two recurring goals in his movies: to capture the zeitgeist and to goose the audience in any way possible. His big brother, Ridley Scott, occasionally has loftier aims and has been rewarded with Oscars and other mainstream accolades. Ridley was at his best at the beginning of his career, when he made two justly legendary movies: “Alien” and “Blade Runner.” (Although the latter, with its endless series of director’s cuts, has become overrated. Watch it more than once and you might realize how lugubrious it is.) These films earned Ridley the lasting respect of critics and cineastes, while Tony has never quite repaired the reputation he established with his contributions to 1980s culture: “Top Gun” and “Beverly Hills Cop II.” (Before Michael Bay, there was Tony Scott.) Since that decade, Ridley’s films have veered frequently into self-important bloat, while Tony keeps his lean and mean. The younger brother is more likely to appall. That’s probably why I enjoy his movies more, even when they’re terrible.

“The Hunger” is not terrible. Typical for Scott, it’s unconcerned with conventional notions of good taste, and that’s what you want in a vampire movie. It begins with a coked-out mashup of incoherent cross-cutting: an early-MTV-style musical sequence, primate research and a seduction by vampires, thrown together with little purpose and less sense. The sequence succeeds only in establishing “The Hunger” as a product of its time — an obsession for Scott. His use of aggressively of-the-moment music, fashion and technology, of course, only makes the movie look more dated in retrospect, but I’ve never gotten the sense that Scott is concerned about shelf life. He directs like a shark: always moving forward.

After the gonzo opening, “The Hunger” settles into a more sane rhythm, and the elements of a plot begin to emerge: Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and her lover, John (David Bowie), centuries-old vampires both, live in elegant, dimly lighted splendor in a vast Manhattan townhome. They become aware of research on aging by an ambitious young doctor, Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), who has successfully toyed with the biological clocks of primates, manipulating them into extended youth until their age ultimately catches up with them. This research is of particular interest to John, who like Sarah’s monkeys is beginning to show his age — rapidly. His decline is precipitous, and Sarah doesn’t comprehend the gravity of his condition until it’s too late to save him. Ultimately, though, Sarah’s line of work proves an elaborate red herring, a pretext to set up the central tale: her seduction by the omnisexual Miriam. Clearly, Miriam targets her not because of her intellect or expertise but because she looks like Susan Sarandon. By the way, John does not go quietly — before he deteriorates into little more than an animated corpse, he kills and drinks the blood of his neighbor, an androgynous girl of around 12 who comes over to play the violin with Miriam. The girl’s death, like Sarah’s profession, is gratuitous, tethered only loosely to the story. Like I said: those in search of good taste ought to look elsewhere. I’m certain some aficionados of classical music also won’t appreciate how Scott raids familiar chestnuts to underline key scenes, including the central seduction sequence, which he punctuates with ample nudity. Thank you, Susan Sarandon, for your lack of inhibitions. (Deneuve, a gorgeous 39 at the time of the movie’s release, is more demure and appears to have employed a body double.)

“The Hunger” starts out manic, gets languid and then goes nuts again, with a schlock-horror finale in which Miriam, Sarah and the audience confront the horrible truth of what happens to Miriam’s old lovers. Throughout, it is an exercise in high style, from the stately music to the shadowy lighting to the entwinement of naked bodies. Scott sets out to create a mood of gold-leafed eroticism, and the images carry his signature nervous energy. I suppose you could read the film as a meditation on feminine power, a daring inversion of the conventional gender roles (dashing rake, wilting damsel) that traditionally populate vampire films. But as a critic with a working knowledge of Tony Scott, I would venture that these ideas hardly crossed his mind, or if they did, they have virtually no impact on his cinema. (A thought that might have danced around in his brain: “Hee hee, lesbian vampires!”) “The Hunger” is completely meaningless, executed without feeling or insight. It’s also thoroughly entertaining. This is what I expect in a Scott film.

After “Top Gun” and the “Beverly Hills Cop” sequel, Scott made some desultory thrillers before teaming up with Quentin Tarantino, another sensationalist with a suspect moral code, for the bloody pulp fantasia “True Romance.” Scott then entered what I would call his respectable period, working with A-listers for the submarine thriller “Crimson Tide” (Tarantino jazzed up the dialogue) and two well-received — if, once again, shallow — espionage films: “Enemy of the State” and “Spy Game.” In 2004, he went off the deep end with “Man on Fire,” easily his most appalling movie and the one that established the manic style — jagged editing, crazy subtitles, whooshing helicopter shots — in which he continues to operate. (The first five minutes of “The Hunger” offer a preview of what Scott would become.) The best example of this period is his loopy time-travel thriller “Deja Vu” (2006), which stages a terrorist attack in post-Katrina New Orleans because, hey, Louisiana offered some sweet incentives! In “The Hunger,” as in all his movies, the man does not hold back, and I think his unwavering enthusiasm is what I admire the most about him. No matter the quality of the material or the relative importance of an individual scene, you can be sure that he will direct the hell out of it.