Movie Nation

Animators may use the same digital computer-assisted palette the world over, but the world is still diverse enough that distinct styles and sensibilities exist outside of the Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks/Sony orbit.
“Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart” is a Franco-Belgian production adapted from a novel and concept album by Mathias Malzieu. It’s a Tim Burtonesque fairy tale romance — dark — set to innocuous, forgettable Franco-pop. And it is entirely too weird to have ever been made in Hollywood.
The film sets itself apart within moments of the opening credits. In 19th century Edinburgh, on the “coldest day on Earth,” Jack is born to a mother who leaves him with the tinkerer/midwife Madeline (Barbara Scaff). The ice has frozen his heart on birth, but Madeline conjures up a cuckoo-clock heart that will keep him ticking.
When he’s old enough to go outside, Jack (Orlando Seale) is given three solemn rules.
“Never touch the hands of your (clock) heart.” “Keep your temper under control.” “Never fall in love.”
Madeline is particularly insistent on the last of those.
“One short kiss, a brush upon your lips, could be your last!”
Naturally, the ten-year-old Jack does all of these on his first day at school.
Jack is bullied by Joe (Harry Sadeghi) and takes a tumble for Joe’s girl, the enchanting Miss Acacia (Samantha Barks). That leads to a duet, and a confrontation that forces Jack to flee town with this mission. He will find this Acacia again, no matter how many years pass or borders he has to cross.
The animation is generally surreal, and by introducing the secret hero of “Hugo,” the famous French fantasy filmmaker Georges Melies (Stephane Cornicard) as a character, the animators have an excuse to toss black and white footage at us, visit an amusement park and show us fanciful trains and carriages and an entire sequence, set in Andalusia, animated in origami fashion.
But the inexpressive characters are like something out of a direct-to-video Barbie movie from the ’90s — plastic, immobile. And like another Belgian animated film released this month, “Thunder and the House of Magic,” there is no humor in the story or the telling of it.
The songs add nothing and the story, simple as it seems, wanders through a clutter of explanations, mis-directions and the like. So kids of a certain age, who will stare at anything that’s been animated, may be hard pressed to do much more than stare.
And adults, who will stay five pages ahead of the tale, start to finish, aren’t treated to anything as interesting as the film’s production design. There’s no humor and no pathos. “The Cuckoo-Clock Heart”, pretty as it is, lacks any heart at all.

MPAA Rating: PG for scary images, suggestive material, some language and smoking
Cast: The voices of Orlando Seale, Samantha Barks, Barbara Scaff, Stephane Cornicard
Credits: Written and directed by Mathias Malzieu and Stephane Bela. A Shout! Factory release.
Running time: 1:38

There was a time when the tall, thin brunette Michelle Monaghan walked the catwalks of high fashion, appearing in shows from Milan to Hong Kong and on magazine covers of the late ’90s.

But when she transitioned to acting for TV and the movies, she remembered where she came from.

“I really appreciate playing grounded people,” the Winthrop, Iowa native says. “I have working class roots.” Dad was a factory worker and Mom ran a day care center. So, don’t just doll Monaghan up and plop her in the plot. Give her character a real job, teacher or doctor, truck driver or soldier.

“It’s not a conscious thing to do, finding working class characters to play. I just am drawn to people I recognize.”

In films such as “Gone Baby Gone,” “Trucker” and her latest, “Fort Bliss,” she reminds herself and viewers that “real people” come in all shapes and sizes. Strip off the makeup, put the hair in a bun under a helmet and she becomes Sgt. Maggie Swann, an Army medic –divorced — with a small son who barely knows her when she returns from a long deployment in Afghanistan.

“You get this resolve that comes from your sense of responsibility when you play someone like this,” Monaghan, 38, says. “Me coming off believable as a soldier for ‘Fort Bliss’ was something that I took very seriously. Getting approval from these people in the Army I got to know, and having approval from the Army to shoot at Fort Bliss itself means that you want to get her right. I’m representing the female experience in the infantry. Very intimidating.”

A brisk 21 day shoot meant she could not leave the character behind for long. The posture and comportment of a soldier became her daily life. She went through medic training “so that I would understand what Maggie is supposed to be good at. You get a small glimpse into the intensity and the focus when you do that.”

She talked to women who serve in combat units — 200,000 women have those jobs in today’s Army “and like 40% of them are mothers.”

And quite aside from the externals — saluting, developing a soldier’s gait, the way one takes off a cap or dons a helmet — Monaghan, a mother of two small children herself, got a peek into the world of the oft-deployed soldier-parent.

“A lot of people come home emotionally suppressed,” she says. “It doesn’t serve you to be emotional when you’re Down Range” in a combat zone. “You have to be focused. It’s not easy to flip a switch. It’s a generalization to say so, but loved ones at home have a hard time understanding that, especially from women soldiers.”

Variety’s Justin Chang notes that Monaghan “gives a typically fine, flinty and effortlessly moving performance” in “Fort Bliss,” so her close study of her subject shows.

Women soldiers have to appear as tough, or tougher than the men serving with them, Monaghan notes. That’s appealing, because “I’m tough. Most of the women I know, women in my life, are tough — multi-dimensional, vulnerable, nurturers. We don’t have the opportunity as actresses to show those different sides of ourselves. We’re typically depicted in just a couple of different ways.”

One of those ways is as an object of romantic desire. In one of the more severe moments of whiplash her post “Mission: Impossible III” and “Source Code” career has offered, she went from “Fort Bliss” combat fatigues to the world of romance novelist Nicholas Sparks for “The Best of Me.”

“All that emotional restraint of being a soldier? Let it ALL hang out!” Monaghan laughs. Few might see “Fort Bliss,” but audiences often flock to movies from the novels of America’s most popular romance novelist. And “The Best of Me” (Oct. 17) could be no different. It’s about two high school sweethearts — Monaghan and James Marsden) who stumble into each other when they visit their hometown, promises love and tears. Monaghan had to abandon Regular GI and get her swoon back for co-star James Marsden (“Enchanted”). Did it work?

“All I can say is, bring some tissues!”

He made a big impression in “Zero Dark Thirty,” and the Venezuelan hunk has dazzled in such films as “Carlos,” built from the German TV series about the infamous terrorist, and in a “Bourne” movie here, a “Wrath of the Titans” there.

Edgar Ramirez takes on his most daunting role yet in “The Liberator” or “El Libertador,” the film biography of the liberator of South America, the George Washington of the South, Simon Bolivar.

He’s Bodhi in the remake of “Point Break,” and boxer Robert Duran in the bio pic “Hands of Stone.”

I have some questions about the film and his role in it to ask, but as always, I’m looking for suggestions from readers. Questions for Edgar? Please comment away, and thanks for the suggestions.

Another big weekend for young adult science fiction, as “The Maze Runner” exceeded expectations and delivered a healthy $30-32 million opening. The folks who released “The Giver” would have killed for that. Indifferent reviews didn’t hurt it any more than the “Hunger Games” pictures.

“A Walk Among the Tombstones” opened feebly. People aren’t as “Taken” with Liam Neeson these days. Day late, dollar short, Universal. As usual.

“This Is Where I Leave You” must have skewed too old in its casting to have much appeal. A half-decent Shawn Levy R-rated comedy? It should have opened huge. Not so. A bit over $11 million by midnight Sunday.

“No Good Deed” took a dive in its second week, “Dolphin Tale 2” is lingering in the top ten.

“The Drop,” the best film of the early fall, is barely in the top ten.

“Tusk” opened in over 600 theaters, and those theaters didn’t draw any audience. Pitiful take, pitiful per-screen average. Back to the podcast, Kevin Smith.

The woeful “Let’s Be Cops” is closing in on $80 million, so there’s no accounting for taste.

It’s got Steve Carell as the unflappable “positivity” stay-at-home “fommy” dad, Jennifer Garner as the increasingly frantic breadwinner whose potty training book is about to get flushed, and kids hoping to get through a prom, opening night starring in “Peter Pan” and a birthday party with strippers, respectively.

And that’s leaving out the baby, who melts down eats a magic marker as Dad is trying to kill a big job interview.

Parents know the book, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No  Good Good Very Bad Day.” It’s in Disney’s hands. A “Wimpy Kid” with a Disney touch?

It opens Oct. 10.

Nothing blew up the tomatometer among this weekend’s new movie releases. There are no Oscar contenders in this lot, no potential blockbusters, but nothing as bad as “No Good Deed,” either.

The Kevin Smith “comeback” “Tusk” is the worst reviewed of the lot, and he’s earned worse reviews in recent years. Played out Canadian jokes, weak leads, grim shock value story that fails to shock. It doesn’t stand to make a dime, in any event.

“This is Where I Leave You” is probably the hit from this crowd, an all-star somewhat crowd pleasing R-rated comedy, it allows a lot of funny people to score even if it is dismayingly predictable and heavy-handed. I gave it 2.5 stars, metacritic and RT shows most reviewers fell below that mark.

“A Walk Among Tombstones” is another Liam Neeson hunting a missing person, hunting them with extreme prejudice, thriller. The tone is off, it has women stalked, tortured and murdered by characters once called “homo psychos,” that Leopold and Loeb era take on gays as murderous couples. “Compulsion,” “Diamonds are Forever” just two films where this stereotype played out. Passable reviews for this, but not from me. #univers-a-holes.

“The Maze Runner” is yet another variation of the teens save the future YA sci-fi model, a little “Lord of the Flies,” a little “Six Characters in Search of an Author” or its “Twilight Zone” equivalent, “Five characters in Search of an Exit.” Passing grades from some on this, with its giant spiders and spoon-feed-what-its-about finale. Meh.

“The Scribbler”, a horrific psychological thriller, is in limited release and is a tad better than that, I thought. The insane wonder if they’re the sane ones as they’re being killed off in a halfway house. Grim and grisly and sexually explicit.

“Autumn Blood” is a picturesque Austrian exploitation picture, perverse and arty and nonsensical. Bad. Sat on the shelf for years. Very limited release.

One very good genre film goes into limited release. “Fort Bliss” is another soldier-readjusting to home life — badly — drama. But Michelle Monaghan is terrific in it, an Army medic disconnected from her son, traumatized by war, and dying to get back to it. Sort of.

The effects aren’t much and the story is something of a confused psycho-muddle.
But the graphic novel adaptation “The Scribbler” travels to the screen in healthy doses of R-rated grit, gore and hedonistic sex. It’s about madness and sanity and the ways only the truly mad can grapple with the difference.
Suki, played by Katie Cassidy of TV’s “Arrow,” is the narrator/heroine, a bruised and bloodied beauty who “can’t talk without a pen.” Suki is new to “The Suicide Suites,” a strangely unmonitored halfway house for the supposedly “cured” insane, people working their way back into society. No sooner is she there than the suites start living up to their name.
We recover the stories of who has died, and how, in an interrogation. The cop (Michael Imperioli) thinks she’s responsible. The shrink (Eliza Dushku) isn’t sure.
And Suki’s tale points her ink-stained fingers — she writes everything backwards, by the way — at others in the “Suites.” There’s the promiscuous sex addict in a candy store (Garret Dillahunt) who sleeps with pretty much every resident of this run-down hi-rise. We also meet snake-loving Miss Cleo (Gina Gershon), psychotic Alice (Michelle Trachtenberg) and loony “Bunny” (Sasha Grey) who wears Bunny ears all the time to earn that nickname.
“You might as well jump,” Bunny purrs, “everybody does.”
Suki tells her story, about “the REAL crazy — anxiety and vomit.” And we learn about the doctor (Billy Campbell) whose experimental electro-shock treatment may be “curing” them all, or at least burning off the unpleasant aspects of their respective personalities.
Suki has plenty of those — alternate personalities, “alters” for short. One of those is “The Scribbler,” the compulsive backwards-writer who may be the most dangerous of her “alters.”
But others sense Suki’s real fear, being “cured.”
“You’re worried about becoming ordinary, aren’t you?”
Director John Suits stages a sex scene that fully feels like crazy people having at it — uninhibited, abandoned, urgent, as if they’re afraid they’ll lose the sane parts of their psyche that allow them to enjoy it. Then there’s Ashlynn Yennie, who drew the short straw among this cast, playing Emily, “pathologically afraid of clothing” with all the cheap exploitation you’d expect from that.
The “Siamese Burn” treatment, occasionally self-administered, produces a cheesy alien eyes effect. And they can’t find enough funny stuff to do with the English bulldog Suki hears talking to her in a Cockney accent.
But “Scribbler” is just daring and interesting enough that you can see why a fairly accomplished cast — from Cassidy to Dushku, Gershon to Campbell — was drawn to it, even if the execution underwhelms.

MPAA Rating: R for violent images, some strong sexuality/nudity, and language
Cast: Katie Cassidy, Billy Campbell, Eliza Dushku, Gina Gershon
Credits: Directed by John Suits, written by Dan Schaffer, based on his graphic novel. An XLRator Media release.
Running time: 1:28

This month’s “young adults save the future” film franchise is “The Maze Runner,” an indifferent quest tale about boys trapped in a gigantic maze with no idea how they got there.
A teen boy (Dylan O’Brien) wakes up, screaming, on a freight elevator soaring up to a field, where it promptly drops its “greenie” or newby into a clatch of rustic boys his own age. He doesn’t know his name or anything else other than the English language. But the other lads set him straight.
This is “Glades,” the glade. Some boys are “Builders,” some are “Runners.” They run through the vast walled maze that surrounds their encampment each day, coming home just before the huge walls creak shut on gigantic gears each night.
They’re careful to avoid “The Grievers,” supersized spiders with metallic legs, guardians of The Maze. Because Grievers sting, and their sting causes “The Change” — a poisonous delirium.
There are rules that have kept them alive under the counsel of Alby (Aml Ameen) and the bully Gally (Will Poulter). But the new guy, who recovers his name — “Thomas” — is impatient. He wants to find a way out. Now. He upsets the balance, breaks the rules and then “The Girl” (Kaya Scodelario) arrives and tosses things into a further tizzy.
Are they doomed to a slow death by isolation, or will the Grievers get impatient and storm in to wipe them out?
The big walled obstacle course and not-so-itsy-bitsy spiders keep one from confusing James Dasher’s “The Maze Runner” with last month’s “The Giver” or last spring’s “Divergent” or this fall’s latest “Hunger Games.” Plainly, these authors all picked up the same copy of Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” or Vladimir Propp’s “The Morphology of the Folk Tale.”
That’s what the grumpy teen walking out of the theater ahead of me meant when she griped “Why do these things all look alike, and always need sequels?” Yeah, they’re all alike, just alike — simple quest tales with little wrinkles too make you think maybe THIS time things will be different.
The actors aren’t bad, with “Nanny McPhee” vet Thomas Brodie-Sangster standing out by being as skinny as a teen stuck in the woods, forced to fend for himself, and O’Brien, Ameen, Poulter and Ki Hong Lee (as a “Runner”) having decent screen presence.
Art director turned director Wes Ball gives us a convincing maze of towering, weathered and moss-covered concrete, and a woodland world where the boys have mastered shelter building and fire starting. The film has fine moments of claustrophobia as the moving walls threaten to squish assorted boys, the spiders are humongous and the lads disagree among themselves, violently, about what to do.
Very “Lord of the Flies.”
But all these literary underpinnings do not disguise a blasé, emotion-starved script, dialogue that ineptly repeats what the images have already shown us is happening, stagey scenes where characters poke each other in the chest to keep them from storming out of the camera frame.
And the resolution to this puzzle is so botched it’s insulting, as if they’re daring us to laugh at the notion that this is merely “the beginning.” You have to go all the way back to last weekend’s “Atlas Shrugged III” to find a sci-fi film promise that cringe-worthy.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, including some disturbing images
Cast: Dylan O’Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Aml Ameen, Ki Hong Lee, Kaya Scodelario
Credits: Directed by Wes Ball, scripted by Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers and T.S. Nowlin, based on the James Dashner novel. A Fox release.
Running time: 1:52

With its latest thriller, Universal arrives a day late and a few dollars short in the Liam “Particular Skills” Neeson revenge sweepstakes.

“A Walk Among the Tombstones” has the veneer of high mindedness that the “Taken” movies lack. But it has Neeson’s Alcoholics Anonymous detective hanging out with a slang-cracking kid sidekick(Astro) and working for a drug dealer played by that “Downton Abbey” fussbudget, Dan Stevens, an effeminate Brit with nothing of the vengeful drug dealer about him.

So all the money was spent on Neeson. The plot has psych-homosexual elements straight out of the 1950s. The violence against women is horrific and the setting, for no serious reason, is 1999 as America braces for the Y2K bug.

Aside from that, though, it’s just great. Well, kind of OK.

Neeson’s Matthew Scudder was a hard-drinking cop in the early ’90s when an off duty shootout led him to quit the force. Now he’s an “unlicensed” problem-solver. Sort of like Denzel Washington in the upcoming and superior “The Equalizer.”

“Sometimes I do favors for people. Sometimes, in return, they give gifts.”

Stevens is Kenny, a “drug trafficker” whose wife was snatched and murdered. He wants the guys who did it.

So Scudder does the shoe-leather work he would have done as a cop, had the drug trafficker wanted cops involved. He asks around.

A weirdo cemetery groundskeeper (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) figures in the story. And he stumbles into the kid, T.J., a whiz at these newfangled personal computers. Every line out of Astro-the-actor’s mouth sounds like…a line.

Writer-director Scott Frank spares us actually seeing the bodies of these women — for the guys doing the killing are serial killers — hacked up. But there’s audio and graphic descriptions from the psychopaths, whom we meet early on.

Frank, who did the far superior thriller, “The Lookout,” objectifies one underage victim — setting her stalking to a golden oldie “Atlantis” by Donovan. His villains are sniggering caricatures out of an earlier age.

And he utterly fails to build Scudder’s AA mania into the plot until the third act, losing track of this aspect of his life to make room for more cutesie T.J. slang-jokes about how “I want to grow up to be a private eye like Sam Spade.”

Neeson is the rock anchoring all this, making the incredible at least passably credible as he lurches into the frame with his limping boxer’s gait. But you get the sense that he is no more “Taken” with this than we are.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, disturbing images, language and brief nudity

Cast: Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, Astro, David Harbour

Credits: Written and directed by Scott Frank, based on the Lawrence Block novel. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:53

She’s one of the loveliest ladies ladies working in the movies.

But Michelle Monaghan has a thing about dressing down and playing working class. Think of her in “Gone, Baby Gone,” or “Trucker.”

And in “Fort Bliss,” she really delivers, playing a battle-hardened combat medic who comes home to a kid who is hard-pressed to bring out the “mommy” in her. Tough performance, subtle.

Questions for Michelle? I figure I’ll ask her about this manual labor/working class mien she’s shooting for, but I’m open to your suggestions. Comment away, thanks for the help.