Movie Nation

Be a real tragedy if this documentary about the Nic Cage/Tim Burton “Superman Lives!” movie that never was never finished. A tragedy.

A plus-sized stand-up gets by on very thin material in “The Fluffy Movie,” a concert film built on the comic stylings of Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias.

His set-ups take forever, his transitions between stories are natural, but drag on forever. And this guy would probably be the first to admit that he’s about as far from comedy’s cutting edge as, oh, Jay Leno or Garrison Keillor.

But Iglesias makes it work, after a fashion. Because he’s a story teller, with a genial stage presence and a Hispanic American fanbase that has taken him from stand-up specials to a Kevin Hart-sized feature-film treatment.

Iglesias, who turned 38 this month, stars in a concert film that pays homage to Eddie Murphy’s “Raw,” an ’80s concert doc that, a cute acted-out prologue tells us, was little Gabriel’s inspiration for getting into comedy after he conned a video store clerk (Tommy Chong) into letting him rent it as a kid.

That prologue tells the story of his conception and birth — about-to-divorce Mom hooks up with mariachi singer Jesus, cigar chomping border country doctor (Ron White) delivers him, the works — a life begins in five minutes.

Then Iglesias takes the stage at a Bay area venue and enlightens us on the banalities of his life — his morbid obesity, his step-fatherhood, and his relationship with the estranged father he barely knows.

These are, he admits, “random stories,” and he draws them out, with mixed results. He kills the first 30 minutes of the show talking about his 100 lb. weight loss, his diabetes, the doctor who gave him two years to live and the visit to a gastric bypass clinic where he sought salvation. First, they had to weigh him, and they were ready — “We have an industrial grade scale,” the nurse tells him. Yes, if they’re using “industrial” in any way with a course of treatment, you’ve messed up, he jokes.

Iglesias, a cartoon voice superstar waiting to happen, is known for his funny voices, and he doesn’t disappoint his fans — mousy women, sullen teens (his step son), an English valet, black people, white people, Mexicans and, thanks to a visit to the Subcontinent, Indians.

That’s where his observation powers shine, picking up on Indian dialect, the affirmation-oriented personalities the culture encourages and a bit of head bobbing that seals the deal on India’s connection with Mexico. Spicy food, colorful accents, “Don’t drink the water,” and English is a helpful second language? It’s Mexico! East!

He imitates Indians, Apu-style, but in a nice way.

He makes fun of their manners, but in a nice way.

But the bulk of the film concerns his relationship with his ingrate of a stepson, and that’s pretty pedestrian stuff, to be honest.

The film doesn’t catch Iglesias when he was younger and hungrier, so to speak. This is like Kevin Hart’s second concert film, sort of a victory lap. His audience is with him, doing too much of the work (easy laughs) for him.

He’s lost a lot of weight, and not in the smartest way, and he preaches about it. He’s a step parent, and he preaches a bit about that, and about the dad he met only recently. He doesn’t touch on America’s Anglo-Spanish culture clash, switching to Spanish here and there for effect.

“Some of you got that. Gracias.”

His comedy, whatever it was at an earlier age, is comfort food now.

But he is never less than good company, and never out of touch with his audience — his peers, more an age group than an ethnic one at this stage. When he admits to buying pirated copies of video games for his kid, he’s at his most human.

“Yes, I have money. But I’m still ghetto.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for suggestive material and sexual references

Cast: Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, Jacqueline Obradors, Tommy Chong, Ron White

Credits: Directed by Manny Rodriguez. An Open Road release.

Running time:

So for starters, no WAY Brett Ratner’s generic, dull and listless “Hercules” (alas, the same can be said for “The Artist Formerly Known as The Rock”) is better than the other popcorn picture opening this last weekend of July — “Lucy.” Luc Besson’s film is demented, loopy and dead-sexy fun.

“Hercules” is just “300-Lite.” Strip all the supernaturalism out of Herc, make him a Merc. Sure. But that should be a fun concept, not a “Hercules as Drill Sergeant Training Thrace for War” swords and sandals and slashing picture. A few laughs, all provided by/given to Rufus Sewell and Ian McShane as the not-a-real-demi-god’s sidekicks, a couple of big battles, a little blood. No romance, a teensy bit of skin.

And Dwayne Johnson sleepwalking/lumbering through the whole affair as if it’s just a paycheck. The early reviews were from overseas lightweights, but the two Hollywood trade papers endorsed this dog, too.

My prediction? Since it was withheld from American critics, the raft of reviews that will come in today and tonight will beat this bum down out of the 60% range, where it sits on Rottentomatoes, now.

Besson’s “Lucy” has Scarlett Johansson in fine form as a college student kidnapped in Taipei who has drugs surgically stuffed into her abdomen for smuggling. The drug makes one hyper-aware, and it starts to leak and Lucy becomes the smartest/toughest/maddest thing on two shapely legs.

It’s a nutty film, with “Lucy,” the first humanoid primate playing a role, animal hunting and killing footage intercut with the action. But it’s fun. Mixed to negative reviews for this one.

“A Most Wanted Man” is the best reviewed wide release opening this weekend, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final tour de force turn, this time in a John le Carre adaption set in Hamburg where spies chase would-be Islamo-terrorists. Yeah, Hoffman’s got “Hunger Games” sequel footage in the can, but let’s be real — this was his last time to shine. Very good film.

Woody Allen finally gets the beat-down he deserves for repeating himself and making comedies with diminishing returns on laughter. “Magic in the Moonlight” is a DOA period piece about a medium being exposed by a cynical magician. Decent cast, as always. Lovely French Riviera settings. Dead movie. Bad enough to make you reconsider the arch and stiff “Blue Jasmine,” or the tired jokes and cliches of “Midnight in Paris,” his biggest hit and best of his recent offerings.

Rob Reiner is over. Unless older audiences find his critically dismissed “And So It Goes,” write him off. He hasn’t had a major studio release since “Flipped,” and that went into limited release only. And he hasn’t had a hit in this millennium. Done. The movie’s not terrible, just old and tired.

The Anna Kendrick mumblecore dramedy “Happy Christmas” hits a few theaters and is quite good. Joe Swanberg (“Drinking Buddies”) writes interesting characters and the actors he casts make good use of them.Good reviews for that one

It was a bra-less age, when men wore skirts of leather, planted their feet and commenced to speechifying. About heroic deeds, which they made up, or at least exaggerated — in Greek.

This is the world of “Hercules,” a B-movie with a hint of “300-Lite” about it. Directed by Brett “I almost ended the X-Men” Ratner and starring Dwayne “Why didn’t they cast me in this ten years ago?” Johnson, it’s a brief, violent and narrowly-focused tale of a Hercules utterly removed from myth.

This is Hercules as hired warrior, Herc the Merc, an incredible Greek hulk whose “half-man, half-god” story is declaimed, loudly, to one and all by his brash press-agent of a nephew, Iolaus (Reese Ritchie of “Prince of Persia”).

Iolaus weaves tales of Herc’s 12 labors, his battles with the hydra and gigantic boars and lions. This impresses those who would hire Hercules and his mercenary sidekicks. And theoretically, at least, it intimidates his enemies. Who wants to fight a fellow whom Zeus sired, a man who cannot be killed?

Regarding those “sidekicks” — news to me, too. “In legend, you fight alone,” those meeting the man complain. Herc likes to keep his saga single-handed, for PR sake. But in this tale of the man mountain, he has wily knife-thrower Autolycus (Rufus Sewell), Amazon archer Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), the mute berserker Tydeus (Aksel Hennie) and wizened spear-wielding seer Amphiaraus (Ian McShane) as his crew.

When the King of Thrace (John Hurt) and his hot daughter-in-law (Rebecca Ferguson) need help fighting a warlord, they offer to pay Hercules “twice your weight in gold.”

To which Autolycus cracks, “Eat up.”

The rapists and pillagers confronting Thrace are numerous, tall, bald and painted green.

“Look at me,” Hercules barks. “Do I look afraid?”
Johnson leaves his eyebrow arching bit behind for this action epic, and that’s a pity. The humor is what works best, and most of the funny bits go to McShane, playing a seer who knows when he’s supposed to die, and how — or thinks he knows — and Sewell, every bit McShane’s match in landing a punchline.

What Ratner has turned out here is a myth with all the mythology stripped from it. This 98 minute film has three decent battles in it, and a long training sequence where the Thracians are prepared for battle. Why make a Hercules movie about that?

He’s haunted by the deaths of his family, tormented by visions of the three-headed dog from Hades. Yes, they tell you it’s Cerberus, just in case you slept through that class in school.

Joseph Fiennes shows up as the King of Athens, along with a klatch of character players you’ll recognize. The production team does a swell job of recreating the ancient citadels of the fourth century, B.C.E.

But for all the fun these folks could have had with Hercules maintaining the supernatural assistance facade, or denying it as his handlers gild his lily testifying that it’s true, the movie is content to just go through the motions. Ratner doesn’t so much as ask his actors to walk and talk at the same time. Perhaps the digitally-augmented sets demanded it, but players standing still, staring into each other’s eyes and delivering pep talks, trash talk, threats and jokes to each other is dull and stagy — bad theater.

And Johnson, in a role he was buffed up to play, seems more inclined to go through the motions than his colleagues. At 42, he’s still got the bulk, but the grace of movement is gone, along with the eagerness, the twinkle in the eye and the cocked-eyebrow that always let us know he was in on the joke. “Hercules” was plainly just a paycheck, repayment for all those years in the gym, and in every scene, Johnson reminds us of that.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for epic battle sequences, violence, suggestive comments, brief strong language and partial nudity

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, John Hurt, Joseph Fiennes

Credits: Directed by Brett Ratner, written by Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos. A Paramount MGM release.

Running time: 1:38

Two old pros show the kids how chemistry works in a romantic comedy in “And So It Goes,” a love-the-last-time-around romp that’ll give its target audience the warm fuzzies.
Diane Keaton dons one stylishly kicky outfit after another — hats included — trills “La di dah,” or words to that effect, and all is well in this high-rent corner of Connecticut, where the perfectly-coiffed Michael Douglas plays her permanently-grumpy realtor neighbor.
They fight, flirt, annoy and court like it’s 1979. This Rob Reiner comedy has the Oscar-winning Heir to Hepburn and the Oscar-winning Son of Kirk in grandparent mode, just a couple of spry old-timers forced together when the grandkid he never knew moves in, and prefers the company of the neighbor lady who cannot stand him.
Oren Little (Douglas) is waiting on that one last big sale before retiring in tony suburban Bristol. After 44 years in the business, he’s selling his priciest listing — an $8 million mansion that was his home. Widowed, he drives to showings in his vintage Mercedes convertible, himself immaculately turned out, the house immaculately staged. It’s over-priced, but telling him he that sets him off.
“Wiggle room” to Oren is another way of saying “extortion,” as “rape is just another form of affection.” Yes, he goes nuclear in a heartbeat.
His neighbors in the charming waterfront fourplex he’s downsized to have to contend with rudeness, selfishness and general boorishness, which his second martini only accentuates. The little boys of one neighbor have a code phrase for cranky Oren.
“TOO MUCH NOISE!”
Leah (Keaton) is a widowed lounge singer who fronts a jazz combo (Rob Reiner plays the toupee’d piano player) who cannot get through a set without talking about her late husband, and weeping. The tactless Oren is the last guy she’d be interested in, age-appropriate or not — even after Oren shares his own widowhood woes.
“I cried all I’m ever gonna cry.”
But when his estranged, ex-junky son (Scott Shepherd) shows up and drops his daughter, Sarah (Sterling Jerins) on Dad as he heads off to prison, Oren’s crankiness endures its toughest test. Leah steps in and that throws the two adults together, awkward though his pick-up lines eventually turn out to be.
“I’ve sold houses older than you. And in worse shape.” “Last time I had sex I tore my ACL.”
Working from an undemanding Mark Andrus (“As Good as It Gets”) script, Reiner steers closer to his old Big Budget Studio Picture form. He did “When Harry Met Sally” in his prime, but his last film was the deservedly unseen Morgan Freeman twinkler “The Magic of Belle Isle.” His players know how to land a laugh, and he fills in around the leads with choice character player support. “Jersey Boy” Frankie Valli plays a club owner who might book Leah, and the great Frances Sternhagen is Oren’s only friend, a fellow realtor who lets a few cute codger cusswords fly in between puffs of her ever-present Camel Unfiltered.
“Christ on Ice and Mary in the Penalty Box!”
It’s all adorably light, aside from the odd, jarring moment when Oren has to face the ultra-realistic addicts of his son’s former life. And the players are never less than game.
Mercifully, the movie isn’t about the child. But the jokes, sight gags and comic situations never aim higher than “cute,” and often fall short. Oren is kind of a half-hearted ogre, and Keaton’s Leah is half-greatest hits performance, half-wardrobe, with that wardrobe looking like half the picture’s budget.
Still, seeing these veteran players go through their paces, find their comic rhythms and probe for laughs where many a laugh has been found before is not a bad thing. Now that everybody who wanted to see it has caught the story of Frankie Valli’s life on the screen, here’s a perfectly pleasant, if winded replacement, one with the real Frankie in it.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexual references and drug elements
Cast: Michael Douglas, Diane Keaton, Sterling Jerins, Frances Sternhagen, Rob Reiner.
Credits: Directed by Rob Reiner, written by Mark Andrus. A Clarius/Castle Rock release.
Running time: 1:33

Those of us waiting for Woody Allen’s return to nostalgia after “Midnight in Paris,” fans who figure his love of 1920s “Hot Jazz” and theatrical, dated dialogue make him most at home with period pieces, are in for something of a let down with “Magic in the Moonlight.”
This year’s Woody is a 1920s romance set in the sunny, summery south of France, a world where every mansion is perfectly preserved, every open top Alfa Romeo roadster is immaculately restored and every linen suit or flapper dress flawlessly recreated.
But the “comedy” set in that world is an almost painfully slight and parched farce that toys with the debate of “childish” faith in the supernatural and religion versus “the dull tragic reality of life.” It’s not a bad film, just lifeless.
Colin Firth is Stanley, who makes his living in heavy makeup as the Chinese conjurer Wei Ling Soo. When he isn’t making elephants disappear from a stage in 1928 Berlin, he debunks “charlatans and frauds,” people who pass themselves off as mediums, and those who believe in the occult or the “power of prayer.”
But even though the vain, egomaniacal and ever-smirking Stanley has “all the charm of a typhus epidemic,” he does have a friend among his peers. Howard (Simon McBurney) shows up backstage and talks Stanley into coming to the Cannes coast, where Howard thinks this new American medium might be “the real thing.”
“There is no REAL thing,” Stanley sneers, “from the seance table to the Vatican.” He takes the challenge. He will observe this Sophie (Emma Stone), her stage mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and the wealthy, “gullible dupes” (Hamish Linklater, Jacki Weaver) she seems to be conning. And he will expose her.
But Stanley, “who believes in nothing,” is challenged by this pale, wide-eyed waif, who seems to have the gift she claims. When a seance doesn’t unmask her, Stanley takes her on long walks, lovely drives to visit his aunt (Eileen Atkins of “Doc Martin”), rainy afternoons that end in an astronomical observatory.
Allen, is of course, repeating himself. That last bit is borrowed from “Manhattan.” The deep philosophical debate here was a big part of his 1970s and ’80s films, and the mismatch in ages — the dashing Firth paired up with the more-girlish-than-ever Emma Stone, who looks half his age — also conjures up memories of “Manhattan.”
But “Magic” is not without its charms. Linklater, of TV’s “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” croons love songs and (apparently) plays the ukulele as his scion of wealth courts the charmed but reluctant Sophie. Stone, staring into the distance as Sophie gets her “mental vibrations” going about this person or that “spirit,” makes an engaging muse for a filmmaker who has had many of those.
But Firth, summoning up his snobbish Mr. Darcy of the distant past, isn’t helped by the timing of the scenes or slack pace of the picture. Allen can only get away with his dissertations on Nietzsche when the movie surrounding them is sprightly, light on its feet. Even the jazz club scenes are stiff and stale, the music sounding more like old ’78s from Allen’s record collection than something the musicians on screen are playing.
We don’t really buy Firth as the great cynic here any more than we accept his abrupt “eye opening” transformation into a convinced, and perhaps smitten, doubter.
“Magic” lacks too many things to rank among Allen’s better recent films — the come-uppance and zeitgeist currency of “Blue Jasmine,” the frivolity of that don’t-think-too-much-about-this lark “Midnight in Paris.” But the biggest shortcoming is right there in the title, a tease if ever there was one.
Where’s the “Magic”?
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a brief suggestive comment, and smoking throughout
Cast: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Marcia Gay Harden, Hamish Linklater, Eileen Atkins, Simon McBurney
Credits: Written and directed by Woody Allen. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Running time: 1:39

After a decade when the only person to take her seriously was Woody Allen, Scarlett Johansson seems to have found her groove of late, with the new actioner “Lucy” as further confirmation of her niche.
She’s been a poker-faced Russian comic book heroine in “The Avengers” universe, a murderously humorless alien in “Under the Skin” and a voice a guy could fall in love with in “Her.” And that’s the polished skill-set she brings to “Lucy,” a vulnerable college student whose poor choice in beaus gets her tangled up with a Korean/Taiwanese mob about to unleash an irresistible new drug on Europe.
Lucy resists the pleas of Richard (Pilou Asbæk) to deliver this briefcase, so he just handcuffs it to her and sends her in to meet her fate with Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi).
Jang’s bloody hands and the bodies he steps over to get to her make Lucy whimper in fear. And that’s before she realizes what his associate, “The Limey” (Julian Rhind-Tutt) has in store. They need to transport this potent new drug and she’s to be one of the couriers. They knock her out and sew it into her intestines.
“I’m afraid it’s our business model.”
But an unexpected beating makes the drug leak into her system, and that’s when Lucy starts to discover how “limitless” her potential truly is.
That “We only use ten percent of our brain” stuff, basically recycled from the Bradley Cooper thriller “Limitless,” is delivered by Morgan Freeman in a lecture in Paris, while Lucy struggles to survive Taipei long enough to get on a plane to meet him.
Johansson gets a marvelous, simple phone call scene where she tells her mother, “I feel everything — space, time…the rotation of the Earth, the heat leaving my body.” And that’s just the beginning. Big numbers on the screen tell us when she clears 20% brain usage, 40%, and so on.
French action auteur Luc Besson, who turned to producing with the “Transporter” and “Taken” movies, mounts a dazzling fast-motion car chase through Paris and scintillating Scar-Jo slo-mo face-offs with legions of bad guys in this insanely ambitious popcorn popper.
Effects get across the evolved state Lucy is headed for, and simple, comical intercuts of animal kingdom footage show leopards hunting gazelles and the like, just to underline the predatory nature of Lucy’s first encounters with the bad guys.
Amr Waked plays a befuddled French cop caught up in her quest, and things turns deliriously silly and metaphysical as the film veers into Johnny Depp “Transcendence” omnipotence.
But Johansson never wavers, never varies the confident, robotic monotone that Lucy adapts as she controls her mind, her body and then others, and finally gravity and physics itself. She lets her hair fall, strategically, over her right eye and doesn’t blink or wrinkle her short skirts as she guns down or psycho-kinetically punches out or levitates the bad guys. It’s not a great performance, just a perfectly consistent one.
Besson’s script may let her (and Freeman) down in the third act, but the 89 minute long “Lucy” is so brisk it’ll give you whiplash. Even marginal thrillers benefit from a director and star who have a sense of urgency and are as hellbent as this on not overstaying their welcome.

(Related, “Lucy” is a box office smash!)
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, disturbing images, and sexuality
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman,Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked, Julian Rhind-Tutt
Credits: Written and directed by Luc Besson. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:29

You can sense a John le Carre spy novel adaptation, often before his name turns up in the credits. The hero’s cynicism at war with his skepticism, the professionalism at war with personal demons — in the spy master’s gloomy, overcast world they’re all spies “Who Came in from the Cold.”

That’s especially true in “A Most Wanted Man,” a New World Order/Old School espionage thriller built around one last magnificent performance by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

It’s a modern story of spy games in post-9/11 Hamburg, set in a secret German unit that looks at “every dark-skinned man as someone who wants to kill us.” That’s the nightmare of Gunther Bachman (Hoffman), in his less-guarded moments, lets us see — the terror of having another 9/11 happen on his watch.

A bearded Chechen Muslim (Grigoriy Dobrygin) swims ashore from a merchant ship, keeps his hoodie pulled low over his haunted/demented eyes, and tries to blend into the port city. Gunther’s team (Nina Hoss and Daniel Bruhl among them) is on the guy the moment he visits a public space.

Why is he here? Gunther is curious enough follow him without picking him up, to try to keep his hated state police rival at bay. But what about the American “observer” (Robin Wright), the embassy liaison who cleverly steers conversations clear of confrontation and toward cooperation — cooperation that benefits the U.S.?

Meanwhile, our crazy-eyed Islamist is hiding out amongst Germany’s large Turkish population which enlists a civil liberties lawyer (Rachel McAdams) to help. Is she naive enough to not ask the right questions? Can she spot trouble when she sees him?

Gunther & Co. are also after the Arabic head of an Islamic charity whom Gunther is sure uses it to funnel money to terrorists. And there’s a Hamburg banker, played by Willem Dafoe, the heir to an institution with a long history of doing below-the-table deals with whatever foe the West has at the moment — Soviets, then, Islamo-fascists now? Polished, rich, but a little nervous, he’s worth leaning on, laying out just what dirt you have on him.

“You’re THREATENING me!”

“Just sympathizing,” Gunther purrs.

Hoffman is merely the first among equals in a stellar cast. Everybody speaks English (snatches of Turkish and Arabic pop up) with a hint of a German accent, and Hoffman gives Gunther the guttural growl of Richard Burton doing a German accent. It conjures up memories of half a century of le Carre adaptations, from “Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy” and “The Constant Gardener” to “The Russia House.”

Wright is delicious as a smiling puppet mistress who, being American, calls more of the shots than the Germans would like to admit.

Dafoe beautifully plays a powerful man trying to hide how rattled he is, and McAdams, the closest this cast has to not-quite-right casting, is beguiling enough to make us wonder where her lawyer is foolishly idealist or cunning.

Screenwriter Andrew Bovell (“Lantana”) gives Gunther an ever-present cigarette as well as a regular seat at pretty much every bar in Hamburg. And director Anton Corbijn (George Clooney’s assassin thriller, “The American”) and his team paint a Hamburg with both a seedy, seaport side and the sheen of great wealth and power.

John le Carre’s novels dwell on the greys in a black and white world where “You’re either for us or against us” is a naive luxury no one can afford. “A Most Wanted Man” brings us into a new version of that world, where Islamists are the new Soviets and Germans have the role of patient, methodical plodders that Her Majesty’s Secret Service usually fulfill in his stories, doing the legwork, running informers and following the faces and the money as they try to get to something bigger than any impulsive American drone strike would deliver.

And Hoffman, in last great performance, embodies that patience, that professional annoyance at others’ impatience, and just a hint of worry that his “be patient” gamble could let a potential threat escape his clutches and cause the next terrorist incident in a world fearfully awaiting it.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, Willem Dafoe, Grigoriy Dobrygin

Credits: Directed by Anton Corbijn, script by Andrew Bovell , based on a John le Carre novel. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 2:00

Director Mike Cahill has spent a lot of time, the past couple of years, thinking about coincidences, “big ideas” and the human eye.

“There’s magic in real life,” the director of “Another Earth” says. “I’ve had more coincidences than any other person in history. So I sometimes wonder just how ‘real’ this ‘real world’ is.”

He’s in search of film projects “where big ideas turn up in intimate stories — this notion of what happens when you die, what our deepest fears are, losing someone you love. Embed those in a personal, intimate story, that’s kind of where I live as a filmmaker.”

And for his latest film, “I Origins” he had to find a cast with the deepest, most immersive eyes he could find.

“If you look very carefully into someone’s eyes, you can see their being, their feelings and their emotions. Great actors give you even more than that. It’s the most restrained kind of acting, doing it with just their eyes.”

Where “Another Earth” used the idea that an alternate Earth appears in the sky, freeing a guilt-stricken woman (Brit Marling) from the grief of having caused other people’s deaths because the “other her” might have not been to blame, “I Origins” explores what happens when a molecular biologist is confronted with a hint that science doesn’t explain everything. Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) whose focus is on the eye, aims to close the “loophole” that creationism exploits about the novelty in “design” of the eye, by finding an evolutionary missing link. He has success, only to wonder if the late love of his life and her unique eyes have turned up in another human being.

Cahill needed a star who could manage “the most restrained kind of acting, doing it with just their eyes. In this movie, we get the whole arc of the of the character Ian is revealed in Michael’s eyes. That’s a tremendous talent, for someone to be able to pull off showing ‘arriving’ at this, the end of his story arc, in just his eyes, without speaking a word.”

According to Pitt, that’s not just an accident of nature, that eye-empathy that some actors have and many don’t. The 33 year-old, best known for dark, twisted roles in “Boardwalk Empire” and such films as “Seven Psychopaths” and the recent “Rob the Mob” relished the chance to draw the viewer in with just his eyes. “You do have control over it…(Laurence) Olivier used to say that he would look right off the lens, and if you do that in cinema that you connected more with the audience. I absolutely believe that and I can feel it working when I’m doing it.”

Cahill cooked this tale up with specific actors and their eyes in mind. Marling, his frequent collaborator since college, has a supporting role. Astrid Berges-Frisbey plays the great love of Ian Gray’s life. Pitt and Cahill created Gray together. “This character was really his creation, based on my concept,” Cahill says. The result is a disquieting slice of romantic science fiction that collected the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, given to thought-provoking indie films that focus on science and scientists.

Critics, wrestling with the movie’s concepts and ideas, haven’t come to a consensus on the merits of “I Origins,” with the Christian Science Monitor praising its “deep-dish philosophizing” but The New York Times sniffing that “It may blow your mind, but only if you’re not in the habit of using it.”

Pitt isn’t disappointed in that reaction.

“It’s easier to make movies that don’t make a person think. But audiences are like actors, I think. They crave good material, just like I do. They get more out of it.”

Cahill, 35, makes light of the mixed reviews, saying “I believe there are movie-goers out there who like to think. And if three of them, just three, watch the movie and connect with it, than I will be happy. The best part of life is finding those like-minded individuals. And if only three ‘get it,’ those three are invited to