Movie Nation

“The Words” is, as its name suggests, a wordy melodrama about a young writer, Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), who finishes his first novel, three years in the making — which is promptly rejected. Maybe, he wonders, he’s not who he thought he was — a writer.

Then he stumbles across a yellowed, unpublished manuscript from long ago and sees his salvatation, his shortcut to fame.

Maybe, he realizes, he’s not who he thought he was — an ethical, honest man.

“Words” is an overly complex variation on an idea Woody Allen toyed-with in his stumbling “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” this notion of counterfeit literary fame, a stolen manuscript. What co-writer/directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal (“Tron Legacy”) attempt to do with it is get at the guilt that comes with ill-gotten glory.

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“Who is John Galt?” has become the question on all of America’s lips in “Atlas Shrugged: Part II, The Strike.”

But a better question might be “Where is John Galt?” Or “When is John Galt going to show up?”

Because whatever its politics, “Shrugged” shrugs its way through the middle installment in this right wing soap opera with zero sense of urgency and no hurry whatsoever.

They’ve re-cast the adaptation of Ayn Rand’s romance novel for the downtrodden rich, using more former “name” actors in the leading roles. Thus, D.B. Sweeney is the mythical Galt, the guy luring America’s “I built this” crowd into some sort of uptopia for the One Percent.

But he doesn’t show up until the curtain. Not that his arrival animates this humorless rant.

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“The  Apparition” wafts out of the ether like the ghosts of bad movies past, the very picture of the cinema’s Dog Days of August.

It’s a “Paranormal Activity” knockoff, without the found footage conceit. And it’s science vs. ghosts, in a limp salute to “Paranormal” and “Ghost Busters” before it.

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Anne and Georges are elderly Parisians taking life’s victory lap.

Their child is grown and married. Pianists and piano teachers, they can attend concerts and listen to CDs of their famous former students. Their routines are as set and comfortable — he knows which books she likes and recommends them, she knows how he takes his eggs. And they still have so much to talk about with one another.

But a stroke interrupts that. Michael Haneke’s “Amour” is about what happens afterwards, the steep decline, the physical and emotional challenges facing the still-healthy half of the couple. It’s about the limits and ultimate expressions of love, about what a loving couple has after everything that they’ve shared in their lives together is gone.

Haneke (“Funny Games,” “Cache,” “The Piano Teacher,” “White Ribbon”) has tackled a difficult subject that is unpleasant to watch, more unpleasant to think about. But the 70 year-old filmmaker has done it with taste, discretion and sympathy.

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So why now more “American Pie”?

It’s a lame one, just the same one now with much older guys.

And starlets wearing mileage from whiskey and rye.

Singing “Why did my career go ‘bye’?”

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You’ve spied the electronic billboard message on the Interstate and maybe felt a chill as you did — “Amber Alert,” then a car description, maybe even a license plate. Who among us hasn’t at least taken a glance to the left and right to make sure we weren’t passing the suspect vehicle at that very moment?

But who among us would dare to follow such a car if indeed we saw it? Yeah, we’d phone 911. But chase the vehicle, at a safe distance, to a service station? Try to peek in the tinted windows?

That’s the killer premise of “Amber Alert,” an often effective, occasionally illogical no-budget thriller built on “found footage” of such a pursuit.

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“Alex Cross” is an interesting exercise in back-engineering, a prequel that takes us back to the days before the psychologist/police profiler was the sage, solemn and inscrutable sleuth whom Morgan Freeman ably brought to the screen in two films over a decade ago.

This Cross is cocky, a bit trigger happy, prone to revenge, a real “action hero.” And this Cross is played by Tyler Perry.

But by definition, he’s less interesting. When you fill in somebody’s back story, you strip away their “loner” mystique. When you focus on the flippant in a film about he frantic hunt for a psychopathic assassin, you diminish the urgency of the hunt and remove the gravitas of the character.

And when you make Tyler Perry run and point a gun, you remember why nobody’s ever used him as an action figure before.

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Anna Nicole Smith was “famous for being famous,” or more to the point, “infamous for being famous.” A volutuous Playboy Playmate and Houston stripper who married an old man for his millions, showcased her vapidity on reality TV and never missed a red carpet or any other chance to shake her money maker for the paparazzi, she never achieved anything and didn’t live long enough to celebrate her 40th birthday. But the public couldn’t get enough of this blonde template for the Kardashians to come.

If you’re a direct-to-video movie maker longing for his shot at the big time, what could be better than landing this attention-magnet for the lead in your new movie? That’s the Devil’s bargain that writer-director David Giancola made when he landed Smith for his 2006 “Charlie’s Angels Meets Earth Girls Are Easy” parody, “Illegal Aliens.” He had publicity, more than he could have dreamed. The Vermont filmmaker, who’d used people like Bruce Campbell and a very young Jesse Eisenberg in earlier movies, had a movie Hollywood had at least had heard of and might be interested in distributing. To theaters, even.

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“Act of Valor” is an amped-up, action-packed adventure about the exploits of the Navy’s “Sea, Air and Land” commando teams — the SEALs. It’s a furiously macho saga scripted by the screenwriter of “300” and starring those always-get-their-man men of mystery — real Navy SEALs.

What the filmmaking duo who bill themselves as “The Bandito Brothers” have concocted is an episodic, reverent round-the-world sprint which follows a team of SEALs as they hunt Islamo-terrorists, narco terrorists, arms smugglers and their fellow travelers from Africa to Central America. They’re trying to stop a team of suicide bombers from making their way across the US border.

In bracing, first-person-shooter video game style photography, we follow a platoon of “operators,” as they’re called — Rorke, Mikey, Dave, et. al — as they rescue a C.I.A. agent (Roselyn Sanchez) before she is tortured to death, hound a smuggler (Alex Veodov) who is aiding terrorists, and pursue the Chechnyan mastermind (Jason Cottle) who wants to strike America and cause a global economic collapse.

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Hollywood has a long, rich tradition of historical abominations, but never has there been a history done more abominably than “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”

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