Movie Nation

Video game movie adaptations aren’t really my thing, and for decades, they haven’t proven to be Hollywood’s thing either.

But throwing a couple of Oscar winners, along with Michael Fassbender and $130 million at “Assassin’s Creed” could have changed that. In theory.

It doesn’t. You kind of figured that out on your own, didn’t you? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

“Creed” is a big screen re-engineering of the wildly popular stab, slash and slice video game about an ancient cult of killers whose creed has them protecting a magical talisman from evildoers who want that talisman to “take away dissent and free will.”

The bad guys are the ancient order of Knights Templar.

So basically we’ve got an “Underworld” movie set in Dan Brown/”Da Vinci Code” universe, where murderous “knights” battle killer ninjas instead of vampires vs. werewolves.

In 1492 Inquisition Era Spain, assorted assassins, including Aguilar (Fassbender) try and prevent Catholic fanatics from getting their hands on the Apple of Eden. The freedom of free thinkers everywhere is at stake.

Centuries later, a boy sees his mother’s lifeless corpse in front of his dad’s bloody blade. That boy grows up to be Cal Lynch (Fassbender again) who is saved from a Texas death by lethal injection to serve this scientist (Marion Cotillard) and an organization led by her father (Jeremy Irons).

Cal is a twitchy convicted killer.

“Why the aggression?”

“I’m an aggressive person.”

The scientist has figured out that he is genetically predisposed to be a murderer, thanks to his relation to that assassin of long ago. But she hasn’t just answered the age-old “nature vs. nurture” question about human violence. She’s found a way to tap into “genetic memory.”

Strap Cal into an umbilical gadget in an arena-like simulation space, and she can make him go back through time, experience what his ancestor did, fighting the Templars. Maybe he’ll “remember” where Aguilar and his fellow assassin (Ariane Labed) hid that apple thingy.

Australian director Justin Kurzel (director of Fassbender’s “Macbeth”) stages Wolverine-gloved ninja brawls and parkour chases through 15th century Spain intercut with shots of Fassbender, shirtless and strapped-in, “experiencing” this action in his simulator while his handlers look on.

The effect of this effect is to ruin any tension built up in the bloody past and bore us to tears with intrigues set in the present. There are other imprisoned “assassins” in this Madrid facility — Michael Kenneth Williams and Brendan Gleeson among them. And there’s an “elder” (Charlotte Rampling) in charge of it all.

Yeah, they’re thinking “franchise” here. Spare no expense.

You can’t really fault the elemental Joseph Campbell “Hero on a quest” storytelling, but the inter-cutting undercuts what little plot there is. The foreshadowing is as obvious as the year the past events are set. Yes, 1492 was the Year of the Reconquista. But who sailed the Ocean Blue in fourteen hundred ninety-two?

And for all the money on crossbow shoot-outs, burning at the stake and recreating pre-Colombian Spain, the settings that stand out are real-world dazzlers, the Alhambra in Granada and the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede in Seville.

Fassbender tries to give this guy some edge, singing Cal’s mom’s favorite Willie Nelson-written Patsy Cline hit “Crazy,” for instance. Yes, he got into shape for the part. But for the first time I can remember, he can’t hide the fact that this is just a paycheck job, with a Spanish vacation thrown in.

Cotillard does a fair job of imitating Irons’ plummy English accent, and nothing more.

It’s all more or less watchable, although certainly of more interest to fans of the game. But  that’s using “interest” entirely too loosely for the rest of us. Quest or no quest, cool locations or green screen soundstages, shirtless Fassbender or Fassbender in an assassin’s hoodie, “Assassin’s” never breaks the creed of Hollywood filmed video games — “Action packed, but dull.”

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, thematic elements and brief strong language

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Ariane Labed, Michael Kenneth Williams, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling

Credits:Directed by Justin Kurzel, script by Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, based on the Ubisoft videogame. A Fox release.

Running time: 1:55

“Passengers” offers up such a spotless, pristine vision of our space traveling future that you might be tempted to book a flight.

A gigantic, roomy and shiny space liner takes a crew of 250 or so and 5,000 paying clients among the stars — without — in this case at least, a stop in Key West.

The space liner Avalon summons up memories of Douglas Adams’ “Starship Titanic,” right down to the inane in-flight announcements by the automated passenger-service PA system.

“Wake up, Sunshine! It’s time to relax and enjoy your stay!”

You’re on your way to Homestead II, the planet colony you’ll be joining.

“Don’t get homesick! Get Homestead!”

But if you’re hearing that and you’re all alone, something has gone wrong. Your hibernation pod has malfunctioned.

“Hibernation pods are fail-safe!”

How long until everybody else wakes up, you know, upon arrival at Homestead II?

“Ninety years…We apologize for the delay.”

“Passengers” pairs up the talented and stubble-faced Chris Pratt and the plucky, winsome Jennifer Lawrence in this dilemma. Jim and Aurora are all alone, awake in the void, doomed to die long before their estimated time of arrival. Well, alone save for Arthur the Automated Bartender. Arthur (Michael Sheen) is programmed to listen patiently to their woes, cleaning drink tumblers and generally being sympathetic to their every need. Save for the big one, or the philosophical ones.

“Jim, those are not robot questions.”

Jim’s a mechanic with an engineering bent, Aurora’s a writer — a journalist. He is stumped by the ship’s disinterest in their dilemma, the lack of response from the automation to solving their “unthinkable” customer service failure. Aurora is crafting their memoirs.

“We’re passengers. We go where fate takes us.”

The film has lots of promising problems for us to dive into with our heroes, mechanical and philosophical puzzles to sort out.

But from the opening moments, Jon Spaihts’ screenplay drifts off course, choosing to explain things that would be more dramatic as mysteries and secrets. And Lawrence and Pratt find themselves trapped in a routine cruise ship romance where the pool reaches out into the cosmos, and space suit excursions take the place of rock-climbing walls, luaus and tiki bars.

It’s a slow-moving “spoiler alert” of a thriller. We know what’s wrong, we know who has crossed which lines. All that’s left to ponder in this Morten Tyldum (“The Imitation Game”) exercise in tedium is what they’ll have at the bar, which seems straight out of “The Shining.”

Pratt has nice comic timing, even if he’s somewhat lacking in romantic leading man moves. Lawrence, with or without an Oscar, has never been able to conjure up romantic longing, no matter how beautiful and beguiling she is. It says something about the picture that Pratt is more interesting in his scenes alone, or with the android bartender.

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney set off real sparks and generated genuine pathos in “Gravity,” which has scenarios and suggestions of sacrifice that “Passengers” borrows. That didn’t happen by accident, or by directorial design alone. That’s what chemistry and charisma look like on the screen.

Spaihts, who also scripted “Doctor Strange” and “Prometheus,” is more of a script engineer than a screenwriter. His writing is clockwork get-us-from-A-to-B gadgetry, and his scripts provide a template — in both “Doctor Strange” and “Prometheus” the source material did that work for him — to layer great effects (losing artificial gravity while you’re swimming is nightmarish) onto.

That makes one more too-easily-solved mystery. It should be no surprise that “Passengers” is sterile, airless, a space opera with light comic touches, technological wonder and subzero romantic heat.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sexuality, nudity and action/peril

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen

Credits:Directed by Morten Tyldum, script by Jon Spaihts. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:56

There’s no way Harrison Ford could have guessed that any of the roles he took on in the late ’70s on into the ’80s would turn out to be iconic in their genres.

Yeah, Indiana Jones had to feel like a franchise, right from the start. But “Blade Runner”? The shelf life of that sci-fi noir dystopia has been stunning and unexpected.

Here’s the trailer to the new Ridley Scott produced/Denis Villeneuve-directed sequel, with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford on an empty, dusty post-Climate Change Earth where “replicants” are still a problem. Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, a pretty big cast with some pretty big names will bring this horrific near-future vision to life.

No, Vangelis didn’t do the score to this one (that’s his music on the trailer, though). But Philip K. Dick lives! “Blade Runner: 2049” — next fall.

I’m such a huge fan of both of the McDonagh boys — playwright turned writer-director Martin (“In Bruges”, “Seven Psychopaths”) and his brother John Michael (“Calvary,” “The Guard”) that I’m willing to write-off “War on Everyone” as a pastiche that didn’t pay off.

It’s written and directed by John Michael McDonagh as a send-up of Quentin Tarantino, sort of a QT film created by an educated, literary-minded Irishman. It’s a fiasco, but there’s stiff the occasional riff, rant or reference that works.

It’s a modern-day “rogue cops” picture, set in Albuquerque amidst hoodlums, lowlifes, sand and unflattering sun. As in a Tarantino take on the subject, it’s built around  characters trapped in the ’70s.

Detectives Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard) and Bob Bolaño (Michael Peña) tool around town, swilling beers in a ’72 Monte Carlo, which Monroe is always crashing into bars they’re about to bust up, but is always fully restored by the next scene.

“I LOVE this car,” Monroe has to say, and who wouldn’t?

Monroe’s into old Glen Campbell tunes and lives in a designer house with a pool — in Albuquerque. How can he afford this?

“Overtime.”

They have a snitch, Reggie X (he’s converted to Islam) who isn’t keen on his role.

“Who am I? ” Reggie (Malcolm Barrett) wants to know. “Huggy Bear?”

They have a boss (Paul Reiser), the sort of commanding officer who is always railing at them.

“This is your LAST chance!”

They’re corrupt and cruel. Yeah, they do a few lines of blow with their snitch. Yeah, they’re trigger happy. Yeah, they steal from “the bad guys. And yeah, they run over a mime.

They have no morals or principles. Bust a crook who gets killed? One of them will take up with the dead guy’s girlfriend. She’s played by Tessa Thompson (“Creed”) in ’70s hair and hotpants.

The boys are after Mr. Big, a rich Brit punk (Theo James) called “Your Lordship” by his minions. There are gay underlings played by Caleb Landry Jones and David Wilmot, a sort of inclusive inclusion that almost has a point, at least as far as the plot’s concerned.

And all of it is pitched as a lark, a paint-by-numbers genre pic spiced up with McDonagh’s Tarantino-ish quips and long tirades. A character complains he can’t read their badges because he has dyslexia.

“Are you an actor? All actors seem to be dyslexic nowadays. Used to be called ‘stupidity.'”

And “You’re cops? Where are you guys from? What precinct?”

“We’re from Hell.”

And on and on, discourses on Simone de Beauvoir and Quaker ethics and the whether the “auteur” (director) Steven Soderbergh is Jewish or Swedish.

Minions use words like “contretemps” and the action is stopped for a game of tennis (doubles) with two Muslim women in full burqas.

It’s funny to see Peña playing the “smart funny partner” instead of the dumb one. Skarsgard brings nothing new to the alcoholic crooked cop cliche and Thompson has nothing to play but pretty pouty close-ups in various stages of undress.

McDonagh’s script is so ad hoc, so clumsily random, that nothing adds up to anything. There’s just violence and strip clubs and one-liners that are more clever than funny and Glen Campbell’s Greatest Hits and that lovely blue Monte Carlo.

Neither McDonagh brother (John Michael is the eldest) works often enough that their fans can afford a misfire of this magnitude. And while taking the Irish out of Tarantino is a worthy cause, you’re going to have to bring at least your B-game to that quip fight. This never rates as more than a D.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, sexuality/nudity, drug use and pervasive language

Cast:Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Peña, Tessa Thompson, Theo James, Paul Reiser

Credits:Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:38

Yeah, everybody figured “Office Christmas Party” was the movie to be this weekend, right? Blockbuster in the offing.

Nah.

Will Smith’s latest Shamesless Grab for an Oscar? “Collateral Beauty” is the worst Will Smith opening is the worst Will Smith opening since, oh, “Six Degrees of Separation.” Under $7 million. Terrible reviews didn’t help.

That means that little old “Star Wars” installment guaranteed to buttress Disney’s bottom line owns the field. A $156 million opening weekend, well shy of the inferior “Force Awakens” weekend record ($247 million). But as Deadline.com notes, “Rogue” is building audience as the weekend progresses. Friends telling friends, “Hey, it’s better than “Force.”

Is the wingnut backlash against “political correctness” in the movie (unfounded, in this case) having an impact? Only Fox News & Friends will be making that argument. Fox is just mad that Disney has the rights to SW now.

A couple of legit Oscar contenders crack the top ten — “Manchester by the Sea” and “La La Land.” I’m lukewarm on the latter, but it should garner nominations.

And “Nocturnal Animals” is enjoying the only weekend it will have in the top ten. Not a contender, in my book.

“Jackie” and “Lion” are doing great business in limited release.

“Moana” ($162 million and counting) continues to mop up the animated market, and “Fantastic Beasts” ($207 million) is the WB consolation for the quick death of “Collateral Beauty.”

Another holiday weekend, another failed holiday feel-good pic.

It’s “Collateral Beauty” this weekend, another craven Oscar craving crash-and-burn starring Will Smith.

At the screening I attended, there were studio representatives reminding people that they’d need tissues. But there were no tears. Keira and Kate and Pena and Smith couldn’t sad them out of me or pretty much anybody else there.

You want a movie that manages that? Try “Lion,” when it opens wide. Or “A Monster Calls.” “Hidden Figures” has some choke-up moments. “Loving,” too.

Smith has taken this path before — “Seven Pounds,” “Pursuit of Happyness.” I had a better feeling about “Concussion” as a vehicle, a good movie, good role, potential for tears and maybe an Oscar nomination for Smith. But a Golden Globe, some BET and African American Film Critics recognition and a wider acceptance of the NFL’s shameful cover-up of head trauma in its sport was all he got for that.

Still, got to appreciate the way he’s burning his last year or two of real stardom in pursuit of his idea of excellence.

It’s always more illustrative of a film’s actual appeal/critical enthusiasm to head over to Metacritic and sample the reviews and overall rating for something like “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”

“The Force Awakens” pulled an aggregate score of 81 from the fewer, the prouder critics sampled there. That’s just below the “85% fresh” rating “Rogue One” earned from Rottentomatoes, which has less finesse in its “scoring” and samples a lot more critics.

“Rogue One,” a solid 3-out-of-four stars winner, in my book, managed a 66 on metacritic, though I dare say a re-polling of everybody who foolishly raved up the J.J. Abrams recycling with diversity “Force” would lower that score into the “Rogue” range.  “Force Awakens” was but a glib facsimile of “A New Hope.” “Rogue One” actually shows us something new.

“Manchester by the Sea” opens wide, is an Oscar contender, a Top Ten film and an awards winner already. The early favorite, unless bad Casey Affleck press gains traction.

Movies, even fairy tale adaptations, have taken to coddling kids — fretting more about offending than worrying if they’re challenging.

“A Monster Calls” upends some of that conventional focus-group wisdom. Here’s a child’s fantasy that is as amusing as it is disturbing, a seriously unsettling take on childhood trauma whose horrors are based on the ultimate childhood fear — losing a parent.

Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is “a boy too old to be a kid, too young to be a man,” our narrator tells us. At 12, that is exactly who he has to be — self-starting, self-reliant, dressing himself for school, making his own breakfast, straightening up the house.

Conor’s world is dominated by the sleepless coughing in the next room, the prescription medicines he has to understand more than any 12-year-old should. His mother (Felicity Jones) has cancer.

He’s bullied at school, a lonely, bruised and humiliated child who loses himself in his iPod and his drawings. But those drawings are his coping mechanism. He dreams each night that the nearby church and its graveyard collapse into a sinkhole, with only his screams and his clinging hand keeping his mother from the abyss.

He draws a monster out of the churchyard’s ancient yew tree, a Groot/Treebeard behemoth with the growl of the grandfather (Liam Neeson) he never knew and the unsentimental tough-love of a missing role male role model, the kind he doesn’t have in his life.

Then the monster rumbles into his yard, smashing fences and masonry as he does, and informs the boy that he will tell him three stories, and at the end of those, Conor must return the favor and tell a tale that “reveals your truth.”

Every night at 12:07 Conor faces his demons and this monster as the beast relates oblique parables about faith, empathy, the torture of being invisible, of showing care when judging people.

“There is not always a good guy, Conor O’Malley. Or a bad one.”

Is his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) really the “witch” she seems to be? Are we ever truly able to conquer bullies — who always come in teams of three in the movies?

The stories, little fairy tales presented as marvelous 2-D watercolor animations or 3-D stop motion ones, are meant to teach. But Conor isn’t having it, relenting to hearing each one with the classic British sarcasm.

“Go on, then.”

He is inured to the violence of a medieval story, which appears to be about revenge but is much deeper than that, the monster intones. Conor has “never heard the screams of a man killed by a spear.” Every parable the monster resolves with his own intervention.

“I came walking.”

Meanwhile, the kid’s real world is entering its death throes — a spiral of rage, resentment, terror and guilt.

Director J.A. Bayona (“The Impossible”) doesn’t sugar coat the Patrick Ness novel. This is kid-lit with adult tones and textures. There’s sensitivity, but the harsh edges aren’t rubbed off for kid-safe consumption.

Yes, it’s the movie that the bloated, sentimental “The B.F.G.” should have been. But parents will be wise to spare kids under the age of 8 the traumas shared here.

Young MacDougall is a haunted-looking Brit, a child whose baleful stares should warn bullies that he’s the sort you will eventually need to outnumber when he has finally had enough.

Jones (“Rogue One”,”The Theory of Everything”) is an empathetic marvel, playing a woman who wants to protect her child from awful news, straining to maintain a brave face when the ravages of her disease make that impossible. Weaver is given to “no nonsense–we need to have a talk” role, and she plays its surprising dimensions with care and skill, if not the accent required.

Bayona enlists his movie’s stars and a forlorn monster in his movie’s melancholy, and even when we see where everything is going long before we get there, that mood and tone envelops us, prepares us the way Conor is being prepared — by his monster — for the future.

It’s isn’t for the very young or overly sensitive, faint-of-heart child. But “A Monster Calls” makes a case for remembering that fairytales can terrify as they teach and test us. We’re not really doing our children any favors by sanitizing life, even the fantasy version of it given to us in the movies.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic content and some scary images

Cast: Lewis MacDougall, Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, the voice of Liam Neeson

Credits: Directed by J.A. Bayona, script by Patrick Ness, based on his novel. A Focus release.

Running time: 1:48

As “Miss Sloane,” Jessica Chastain wears blood-red lipstick over the palest of masks of makeup.

Stiletto heels have never seem more aptly-named.

Her dresses and stockings are in commanding shades of black.

She rattles off long, discursive riffs about  her work, her methods, her commitment and her cause. She relates homilies, jeremiads, aphorisms and maxims — her every sentence a lecture to proteges, employers, employees and Senators.

She never raises her voice, but she doesn’t so much talk as bark, bite and thunder.

And as D.C.’s more feared lobbyist, when Miss Sloane barks, bites and thunders, the whole Hill listens.

“Miss Sloane” is a Capital Hill tale in the “State of Play/House of Cards” mold, a melodramatic thriller more realistic than “Scandal,” slightly less riveting than “Scandal.”

And Chastain (“The Martian,””The Help”) towers over it like a colossus, delivering a performance of intimidating power if not righteous rage. “Rage” implies that her character, who leaves the top lobbying firm in town for a “boutique” operation trying to pass a gun control law, loses her cool.

And Miss Sloane NEVER loses her cool.

Though she does burst out laughing at the pitch from the not-the-NRA, that “women” are a problem for the merchants of American-style mass murder and that there’s some foolish, obvious way they can be manipulated into switching sides from the defenders of their version of the Second Amendment, and the church and school shooters who are their real legacy and constituency.

If Sloane’s sudden decision to switch sides seems abrupt, maybe it’s because she’s already calculated the upside, five moves down the board. Or maybe, everyone wonders, “you knew someone” or has some other connection to gun violence.

And Miss Sloane isn’t telling.

Sam Waterston is her thoroughly compromised ex-boss, Michael Stuhlbarg her venomous ex-colleague and Allison Pill her put-upon and resentful ex-protege, people more than happy to take the not-the-NRA’s money to hand Sloane her head.

But she’s in their heads and one step ahead, so in control she never sleeps, popping pills to keep her heart pumping and her head sharp. Love? Never time for that, though she does avail herself of D.C. escort services (Jake Lacy) when the urge arises.

Even her new colleagues (Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw) are more apalled than impressed.

“You’re a piece of work, Miss Sloane.”

Even those encounters have a brittle chill, a paranoid suspicion.

The overarching Big Idea in this John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love,””Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”) film is that a woman who can get things done in this “rotten” system is almost automatically dislikable, wearing her power like warpaint, her “arrogance” like a shield. Yeah, we’re meant to ID Sloane’s political analogues in our own head.

When she goes to war with “the most feared lobby in Washington,” the gun lobby, she knows to “be one step ahead” of the opposition, to have her people do your homework,” to suspect everyone’s motives and loyalties and to have her “trump card” in place, well in advance.

“In this town, no matter where you are,” she lectures, “you’re more than two feet from a rat.”

The slashes of melodrama are a closer to the soapy intrigues of TV’s “Scandal” than one would like. The story arc builds to the sort of confrontation that, since “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” only happens in movies about Washington.

And if you don’t think the subject matter is explosive — guns, gun violence and the hypocrisy and big money that ensure it remains a problem America alone among the world’s democracies just cannot seem to solve — read the laughable “goofs” in the plot posted on the Internet Movie Database. They seem vetted and posted by an NRA lobbyist.

But Chastain? She is fiercely deserving of all the awards’ season praise this performance is generating. There’s an Oscar nomination in this performance and this character. Sloane is fierce, from her first introduction to her final bow. Everything about the character is calculating, from her wardrobe and to every overly self-confident word out of her calculating mouth.

Yeah, you’d want her on your side. Not for her warmth or commitment to the cause. You want her on your side because fighting someone like her is a far scarier thought than having to work with her.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexuality

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, John Lithgow, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sam Waterston, Allison Pill, Jake Lacy

Credits:Directed by John Madden, script by Jonathan Perera. A Europa release.

Running time: 2:12

So there’s love for the cast of “Captain Fantastic,” and star Viggo Mortensen, and the A-listers in front of the camera in “Hidden Figures.”

Those are the two big outliers from the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

Jeff Bridges was honored for his supporting work for “Hell or High Water,” but not Michael Shannon for “Nocturnal Animals.”

“Lion” and “Fences” and “Moonlight” and “Manchester by the Sea” join “Hidden Figures” and “Captain Fantastic” in the best ensemble category — usually an indicator of a best picture favorite.

We have our best “best actress” field in decades this year, with dazzling turns by Amy Adams (“Arrival”), Natalie Portman (“Jackie”), Streep and the song-and-dance turn by Emma Stone in “La La Land.”

Supporting actress is similarly star-studded.

And with Meryl Streep AND Hugh Grant winning plaudits from the Golden Globes and SAG, well — could “Florence Foster Jenkins” have the makings of a dark horse?

Below, find the film acting nominations. For the full list, including TV shows, go to the SAG AWARDS website.

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

CASEY AFFLECK / Lee Chandler – “MANCHESTER BY THE SEA” (Amazon Studios)

ANDREW GARFIELD / Desmond Doss – “HACKSAW RIDGE” (Lionsgate)

RYAN GOSLING / Sebastian –“LA LA LAND” (Lionsgate)

VIGGO MORTENSEN / Ben – “CAPTAIN FANTASTIC” (Bleecker Street)

DENZEL WASHINGTON / Troy Maxson – “FENCES” (Paramount Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

AMY ADAMS / Louise Banks – “ARRIVAL” (Paramount Pictures)

EMILY BLUNT / Rachel – “THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN” (Universal Pictures)

NATALIE PORTMAN / Jackie Kennedy – “JACKIE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

EMMA STONE / Mia – “LA LA LAND” (Lionsgate)

MERYL STREEP / Florence Foster Jenkins – “FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS” (Paramount Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

MAHERSHALA ALI / Juan – “MOONLIGHT” (A24)

JEFF BRIDGES / Marcus Hamilton – “HELL OR HIGH WATER” (CBS Films)

HUGH GRANT / St Clair Bayfield – “FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS” (Paramount Pictures)

LUCAS HEDGES / Patrick Chandler – “MANCHESTER BY THE SEA” (Amazon Studios)

DEV PATEL / Saroo Brierley – “LION” (The Weinstein Company)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

VIOLA DAVIS / Rose Maxson – “FENCES” (Paramount Pictures)

NAOMIE HARRIS / Paula – “MOONLIGHT” (A24)

NICOLE KIDMAN / Sue Brierley – “LION” (The Weinstein Company)

OCTAVIA SPENCER / Dorothy Vaughan – “HIDDEN FIGURES” (20^th Century Fox)

MICHELLE WILLIAMS / Randi Chandler – “MANCHESTER BY THE SEA” (Amazon Studios)

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC (Bleecker Street)

ANNALISE BASSO / Vespyr

SHREE CROOKS / Zaja

ANN DOWD / Abigail

KATHRYN HAHN / Harper

NICHOLAS HAMILTON / Rellian

SAMANTHA ISLER / Kielyr

FRANK LANGELLA / Jack

GEORGE MacKAY / Bo

ERIN MORIARTY / Claire

VIGGO MORTENSEN / Ben

MISSI PYLE / Ellen

CHARLIE SHOTWELL / Nai

STEVE ZAHN / Dave

FENCES (Paramount Pictures)

JOVAN ADEPO / Cory

VIOLA DAVIS / Rose Maxson

STEPHEN McKINLEY HENDERSON / Jim Bono

RUSSELL HORNSBY / Lyons

SANIYYA SIDNEY / Raynell

DENZEL WASHINGTON / Troy Maxson

MYKELTI WILLIAMSON / Gabriel

HIDDEN FIGURES (20^th Century Fox)

MAHERSHALA ALI / Col. Jim Johnson

KEVIN COSTNER / Al Harrison

KIRSTEN DUNST / Vivian Mitchell

TARAJI P. HENSON / Katherine G. Johnson

ALDIS HODGE / Levi Jackson

JANELLE MONÁE / Mary Jackson

JIM PARSONS / Paul Stafford

GLEN POWELL / John Glenn

OCTAVIA SPENCER / Dorothy Vaughan

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (Amazon Studios)

CASEY AFFLECK / Lee Chandler

MATTHEW BRODERICK / Jeffrey

KYLE CHANDLER / Joe Chandler

LUCAS HEDGES / Patrick Chandler

GRETCHEN MOL / Elise

MICHELLE WILLIAMS / Randi Chandler

MOONLIGHT (A24)

MAHERSHALA ALI / Juan

NAOMIE HARRIS / Paula

ANDRÉ HOLLAND / Kevin

JHARREL JEROME / Kevin (16)

JANELLE MONÁE / Teresa

TREVANTE RHODES / Black

ASHTON SANDERS / Chiron

Now this is more like it.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” has fresh faces, fresh music, fresh tech and a fresh take on “Star Wars,” a rarity in this venerable franchise.

It’s almost wholly satisfying — witty, warm and entertaining — a film in which fatalism isn’t a joke, where pitiless death is doled out by Empire and Rebellion, where those deaths have weight and meaning, where suspense is genuine, even if we know that this other-point-of-view prequel will wind up with a very irked Darth Vader.

” Commander, tear this ship apart until you find those plans!”

It’s amazing how viewers can be drawn to the edge of their seats when you try for something novel, a tale more than a glib facsimile of “A New Hope.” Yes, that’s a shot at the dreary, predigested “The Force Awakens.” “Rogue” is the movie J.J. Abrams should have made.

As brisk as the editing and effects whiz Gareth “Monsters/Godzilla” Edwards’ direction might be, it’s the crackling script by Oscar-nominated screenwriters Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) and Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton”) that makes “Rogue One” take flight.

And a cast of brilliant role-players generates empathy, fear, inspiration and quiet mutters of “He/she is soooo cool” in scene after scene, fights and one-liners included.

There’s this new thing, code-named “Death Star,” that the Empire wants finished. It needs its master designer, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) for that. And Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, a good villain) is determined to find him.

Only Galen’s little girl, who lived with dad on work sites playing with Storm Trooper dolls, escapes. Jyn (Felicity Jones) grows up to be a tough, resourceful smuggler and thief. She’s The Hope of The Rebellion. Only she can talk a rogue warlord (Forest Whitaker) into helping her track down her WMD-building dad.

Her minder on this mission is the spy and assassin Cassian Andor (Diego Luna in hired killer mode). And he’s assisted by a re-purposed Imperial droid, drolly voiced by Allan Tudyck.

Their quest takes them to a holy city adjacent to all-important Imperial mines, where Jedi with no mission lounge about, bored religious fanatics with mad fighting skills.

George Lucas used the Akira Kurosawa samurai adventure “Hidden Fortress” as his model for “Star Wars.” “Rogue One” gets deeper into Ronin (samurai whose master is dead) movies with characters played by Wen Jiang and the great martial arts star Donnie Yen (“Ip Man,” “Hero”). Yen is Chirrut Îmwe, a “Star Wars” version of the famed Japanese character Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman.

Chirrut perks up his ears, swings his staff and Storm Troopers go flying. He makes wisecracks as they do, even when he’s taken prisoner, a bag wrapped around his head.

“Are you KIDDING me? I am BLIND!”

Chirrut is the coolest “new” character in this universe since Yoda. Yen is given the funniest lines, but also the most soulful. He is Yoda in human form.

“I am with The Force. The Force is with me” is his mantra.

The guiding principle for this script is “Boba Fett.” He was the bounty hunter some fans latched onto in original trilogy, a ruthless mission-focused mercenary. Versions of that dark ethos ripple through this cast of characters. There’s no “phasers on stun” equivalent in “Rogue One.” Necks are snapped and even friendly informants and possible allies who “know too much” might be dispatched.

Edwards conjures up a fresh twist on a worn-out lived-in galaxy, where hardware is patched and kept running but never repainted, where military transport ships are as dangerous to their crews as to the enemy, and where no technology is OSHA compliant.

Jones makes a plucky, more believably capable heroine than the young Brit of “Force Awakens.” Mikkelsen’s perpetual Dane-on-the-verge-of-tears generates pathos works, and Riz Ahmed (“Nightcrawler”) stands out in the diverse cast as a tortured traitor to the Empire enlisted in the rebels’ mission.

But Forest Whitaker towers over them all, playing a broken, twisted true believer who has lost most of his limbs to The Cause and lost all interest in compassion and fair play — until Jyn shows up.

Here’s what doesn’t work. For all the new tech, new locations and attempts to freshen the story and give it new emotions, the action beats are pretty much identical to those of every other “Star Wars” movies, start to finish.

Melodramatic touches abound, but one or two in the third act just grate. In a movie where deaths have pathos and meaning, it cheapens the picture when you illogically have characters we’ve kissed-off come back for a curtain call. The “urgent” holographic message about the Death Star lacks urgency.

And the inclusion of characters in the fresh bloom of “New Hope” youth, achieved mostly by digital animation, is impressive — just not impressive enough to look “real.” Aliens animated into scenes is a great effect, but the skin tones, movements and facial expressions of animated human beings don’t have the spark of life. I don’t think “I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board” would have had the same bite delivered by a digital Leia.

Those who swooned over “A Force Awakens” should be humbled by the novelty, humanity and surprises of “Rogue One.” This is how a script that varies the formula plays, this is what a diverse cast assembled based on talent and star power and not just checking off inclusion boxes on an EEO form looks like.

And this is what a story that back-engineers and then improves on the marvelous canned corn of George Lucas sounds like. How do you accept a future under tyranny, where the Imperial flag waves over an entire galaxy?

“It’s not a problem if you don’t look up.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for extended sequences of sci-fi violence and action

Cast: Felicity Jones, Forest Whitaker, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, Ben Mendelssohn, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Jimmy Smits. 

Credits:Directed by Gareth Edwards, script by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy. A Lucasfilm/Walt Disney release.

Running time: 2:13