Movie Nation

The most shocking thing about “Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension,” is that four hacks fought to have their names listed in the credits under “screenplay.”

Seriously. It’s the same house, or location. It’s the same set-up — family spooked/stalked by a demon, slightly different effects, different family, different priest, same surveillance camera footage meant to jolt the viewer.

It’s even the same “camera.” Sort of. That’s the gimmick this time, “spirit photography.  It’s through this one vintage video camera that Ryan (Chris J. Murray) can see what’s menacing his 5-iish daughter Leila (Ivy George).

He and his wife and brother-in-law (Dan Gill) have found old VHS tapes, traced the troubled history of this house — or at least this plot of land.

And they can see the little girl engaging in conversations and games of “Bloody Mary” with the unseen demon, which manifests itself in that ink-stain-in-water effect that’s all the rage.

Daddy sets up to “just watch your daughter sleep all night. Nothing weird about that.”

And despite everything he and the wife  (Brit Shaw) and Auntie (Olivia Taylor Dudley) experience and see on the videotape, they keep telling the kid “Go back to sleep.”

Really?

Ugly, intentionally grainy (video retrace lines) footage, a stupid movie, and about the only thing that has advanced over the course of this exhausted found-footage franchise is the supermodel hotness of the ladies in jeopardy. Other than that? Strictly paint by numbers stuff.

And that’s all the review this piffle merits. Aside from making a point to remember the quartet that wanted a writing credit for this cut-and-paste script.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some horror violence

Cast: Chris J. Murray, Brit Shaw, Ivy George, Dan Gill, Michael Krawic

Credits: Directed by Gregory Plotkin, scripted by Jason Pagan, Adam Robitel, Gavin Heffernan, Andrew Deutschman. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:28

“Burnt” is Bradley Cooper’s “Cocktail,” a trendy, slick and superficial romance built around a seriously one-dimensional performance.

It’s a foodie movie whose credits are riddled with big-name chef consultants — Gordon Ramsay, Mario Bitali. The meals are Michelin Guide ready and sumptuous, the kitchen details often just right.

But the star displays all the range of a light switch — “on,” he’s a swaggering, arrogant but charming cook who is “almost as good as I thought I was.” “Off,” he’s an insufferable, short-tempered jerk, hurling dishes, cursing subordinates and flipping out. About food.

Adam Jones (Cooper) once had it all — a place in a prestigious Paris restaurant, the love of his mentor/boss, the hand of the boss’s young, French daughter. But he blew it all, mainly through drugs.

If you’ve ever read Anthony Bordain’s “Kitchen Confidential,” you know this is a pitfall of the trade. Crazy hours, arduous work — something “Burnt” gets at by showing the grueling cleaning the cooks and chefs carry out — good money, often spent on late-late-night recreation.

“Drinking, sniffing, injecting, licking yellow frogs…and women” is how Adam explains it.

He did his penance, shucking one million oysters in New Orleans. He counted. Now, he’s sobered up and “going after my third (Michelin) star.” In London.

Daniel Bruhl is the rich daddy’s boy he bullies into letting him take over his restaurant. Emma Thomson is the shrink Bruhl’s character commissions to give Adam frequent drug tests and off-the-cuff counseling. Omar Sy is the forgiving enemy he ruined back in Paris, here taking on sous chef duties. Mathew Rhys is Reece, the “New Cuisine” king/rival to Adam’s “Old School” “butter and shallots” zealot.

And Sienna Miller is the simmering soul of “Burnt,” the final piece to Adam’s team, a reluctant subordinate and single-mom sure to make Adam give us his vow of chastity.

Producer turned director John Wells (“Company Men”, “August: Osage County”) handles the cooking scenes well, though we are never treated to Cooper’s wizardry with a knife, a staple of films such as “Chef” or “Le Chef.”

He gets the milieu right, with its Gordon Ramsay-style tantrums, time-pressure perfectionism and “Yes, chef” hierarchy among the tattooed, nicked and burned cooks. Adam is set up as a working class Joe who hates food snobbery, a scene nicely underlined in a Burger King.

But he’s a screechy, preachy character, full of blustering pronouncements about food and haute cousine — as handsome as Cooper can make him, and as vapid. Watch Miller act rings around him in their scenes, tune into Rhys as he passes judgment on his rival.

“Doomed youth is romantic. Doomed middle age is pathetic.”

“Burnt” isn’t a bad movie, but the melodrama is overwrought and overdone, the romance warmed over and the “Cocktail” formula shaken, stirred and utterly played.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Daniel Bruhl,  Omar Sy, Matthew Rhys, Emma Thomson
Credits: Directed by John Wells, script by Steven Knight. A Weinstein Co. release.

Running time: 1:41

We don’t really remember that decade of bad Sandra Bullock movies that came before her Oscar winning turn in “The Blind Side.” We just remember how she looked.

The pratfalls might be half-hearted, the misty-eyed appeal to sentiment might be grating. But the makeup and whatever other strategies she has used to fend off aging was perfect. The romantic backlighting was just so, the wardrobe, flattering and just sexy enough.

That’s the sort of movie “Our Brand is Crisis” turned out to be. High-minded — it was produced by her “Gravity” co-star George Clooney and his producing partner — with a message and a moral, this strangely dispirited “romp” through American-style spin-doctoring transplanted to impoverished Bolivia is the last movie you’d expect David “Pineapple Express” Gordon Green to direct. With good reason.

Bullock plays Jane Bodine, a burnt-out campaign manager summoned from the snowy backwoods to fly to South America and help a flailing candidate gain traction with his voters. That first scene tells us that she’s a recovering alcoholic, that she used pottery as her outlet for the six years she’s been away from “the game.”

And it tells us that screenwriter Peter Straughan (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy”, TV’s “Wolf Hall”) isn’t giving us his A-effort, here. “Calamity Jane” is a backwoods cliche and could be next-door neighbor to Mark Wahlberg’s “Shooter.”

Jane has flashes of her old bravado.

“The truth is what I tell the electorate it is.”

You might wonder who is actually footing the bills, paying to assemble this crack team (Anthony Mackie, Ann Dowd, Scoot McNairy). Who wants to be sure ex-presidente Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida, who plays this guy as grumpily “over it”) wins? Follow the money.

But then, Jane may be set up for a fall. Her rival is her longtime nemesis Pat Candy, played with a sinister oiliness by Billy Bob Thornton. His every word reeks of sleazy insincerity, starting with “How ARE you, honey?”

Her candidate is 28 points down in the polls, is arrogant, hates touching people and doesn’t have a smile — he has “a smirk, like George W. Bush.” Nobody likes him.

Jane’s job, once she gets over the Bolivian altitude sickness, is to turn him into a winner, play to his grumpy strengths, and out-dirty-trick Pat Candy’s team.

The big message here is that this isn’t just a “game” to the poor people of Bolivia. Jane may know that “If voting made a difference, they’d make it illegal.” They cannot.

Green, who once had a solid and arty indy cinema career going, cannot for the life of him hit the right tone, here. The film is waterlogged when it should be jaunty, and the cynicism and the sentimentality are kept at arm’s length — as though he’s embarrassed by the campaign-kid about to be disillusioned, or the wily coyote Billy Bob underplays, putting into words what these hired-guns actually think.

“People suck, don’t they?”

The film’s characters are fictionalized creations inspired by the documentary “Our Brand is Crisis,” which was actually about James Carville and others selling their branding/labeling/messaging/character defining wares overseas.  Straughan concocted a star vehicle out of that, full of melodramatic flourishes and painfully awkward asides.

We know where it’s going long before “Brand” reaches its “Crisis.” And we know, as if by memory, that Sandy B. will have nary a hair out of place when we arrive.

MPAA Rating:R for language including some sexual references

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Bully Bob Thornton, Ann Dowd, Joaquim de Almeida, Anthony Mackie,  Zoe Kazan
Credits: Directed by David Gordon Green, script by Peter Straughan , based on the Rachel Boynton documentary. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:47

Here’s what shooting your heist picture in a single take gives you — breathless tension.

The viewer can sense the lack of edits, the feeling that you’re hurtling along, with the characters and the hand-held cameraman, on a downward spiral. Because that’s what heist pictures promise — a caper, the caper goes wrong, and we wonder who among these lusty young Germans will make it through the late night and early AM captured in “Victoria.”

The title character, played with a tri-lingual, makeup-free verve by Laia Costa, lives in Berlin. She’s Spanish, loves the club life and dancing. She flirts with a guy — four guys. And from the looks of them, we know she’s in for a rough night.

You can tell they’re violent, that their boundaries should scare her off. Sonne (Frederick Lau) is a hothead and knows a bit about guns. Boxer, (Franz Rogowski), Blinker (Burak Yigit), and Fuss (Max Mauff) are just as scary, just as out of control.

But Victoria doesn’t flinch. She is drawn to Sonne, and the movie captures their romantic do-se-do in a party.

Then a phone call reminds Sonne of a c0mmitment, a heist they’re to pull. And Victoria is pulled into the vortex of violence that comes from that.

There’s not a lot of plot, not any excess dialogue, just a lot of pre-arranged destinations (22 locations) and a camera chasing them as they do the robbery, hit a club afterwards, and then it all goes wrong.

Director of Photography Sturla Brandth Grovlen’s camera keeps the images tight and in-focus when the characters close in on him, shaking and jolting us as they sprint away from one trouble and into another. “Victoria” is one “shaky-cam” movie almost guaranteed to give you a headache, simply because of the effort your eyes make in keeping everybody steady in the frame inside of your head.

Co-writer/director Sebastian Schipper does a terrific job of maintaining a point of view as he rolls Berlin over to show its drab, grey underbelly. Several scenes rattle the quintet, and rattle us as they battle cops and try to make their getaway with the cash.

The fatalism of Teutonic youth, a hallmark of the German cinema of the Cold War, here takes on a self-destructive tint. There’s desperation, in one and all, a “Breahless/Bonnie & Clyde” need to break free from convention and boredom, an instant connection and sense of “code” that emerges in the film’s 138 minutes.

Yes, it’s a stunt, a gimmick, and 138 minutes of it is entirely too much. Long-take cinema is inherently “uncinematic,” as many of those who tried it (Hitchcock) noted. Editing adds tension, even more than going over two hours without a cut can manage.

But “Victoria” shows us just how real things can get in this tiny-camera/infinite filming (video) capacity era. Plan and rehearse, limit the geography of your shoot to an area whose boundaries are a short taxi ride or long sprint apart. And by all means, make sure your cameraman is up for running a marathon. It’s not just the actors and the viewer who will be out of breath when it’s all over.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, substance abuse

Cast: Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski,Burak Yigit

Credits: Directed by Sebastian Schipper , script by Olivia Neergaar-Holm, Eike Frederik Schulz Sebastian Schipper. A release.

Running time: 2:18

She has been imprisoned for seven years, locked in a soundproof shed with only a skylight and a TV to connect her to the outside world.

Her son is turning five. He was the product of a rape by her captor/tormentor, and has only known the world of this 12 by 12 “Room.”

“Good morning, lamp. good morning sink,” Jack (Jacob Tremblay) coos. Kids can adapt to a universe limited to a toilet, tub, TV and toaster oven.

Upon turning five, Jack’s questions grow more pointed, about the time “before I came.” He is confused about “the real world” and “reality” in general. Ma (Brie Larson), with much of the life drained out of her pale face, tries to set him straight. She has to be gentle, because Jack is given to tossing tantrums at knowledge he doesn’t want to hear. He has never been out in the sun, never had a haircut, never played with another child, has no notion what is on the other side of that always-locked steel door. He’s curious, but scared to death at the possibilities.

“Room” is a wrenching account of a mother’s devotion to the one thing she’s been allowed to have — a little boy — and her guilt from raising him in this awful situation. “Old Nick” (Sean Bridgers) visits her each night, like clockwork, for sex and threats. She cannot protect Jack from him any more than she can protect herself.

Lenny Abrahamson’s film of Emma Donoghue’s novel is an overcast affair, a tale sodden with gloom and sadness. Jack is the only one who doesn’t realize this, and it is eating Ma alive.

The story is seen through Jack’s eyes. He narrates it and lets us see his whole world — mother, sparsely furnished room, and TV — through his innocent eyes.

“Old Nick” is “not our friend,” Ma has to remind him. They practice screaming when they know Old Nick isn’t around, but “the aliens can’t hear us.” “Out there” is nothing but empty space, he’s been taught. Dora the Explorer isn’t the only invented thing TV offers. “Squirrels and dogs aren’t real” either.

But then, in desperation, Ma hatches a plan and risks all –especially the one thing she has in this world, her son — in a chance to escape.

The aching thing about this movie is realizing there are dull, unspeakably cruel monsters in this world who would enslave a young woman and her child in just this manner.  Donoghue plainly was inspired by the Austrian Josef Fritzl, who held his daughter captive and fathered children with her, and the Ariel Castro case from Cleveland — women, kept imprisoned in dungeon-like conditions as sex slaves, having babies with a monster.

Larson was the sober-minded sister in last summer’s “Trainwreck,” and lets us see the exhaustion and hopelessness of Ma. Jack is the only reason she gets up each day and endures each night’s conjugal rape/visits.

Young Tremblay is a wide-eyed revelation as Jack, mercurial and smart, innocent but just beginning to acquire a little wisdom and courage. He does things that frighten him because he is his mother’s strength, now. He gets that.

The story takes a surprising turn midway through, a change in direction that deepens the experience for the viewer, making us culpable in at least part of the misery these two face. The film drags, ever so slightly, in its final acts.

But the miracle of this Irish-Canadian co-production is the tension Abrahamson (“Frank”) manages before that mid-movie climax, and the tension he recreates with a wholly new dynamic. That makes “Room” a movie that will have you checking your locks, looking in on the kids and yet hopeful thanks to the knowledge that children are “plastic” — adaptable, malleable, and able to upend their naive worldview and belief system if they hear it from a loving mother.

MPAA Rating:R for language

Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, Sean Bridgers
Credits: Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, script by Emma Donoghue, based on her novel. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:58

Bill Murray, a funnyman who long ago lost his fastball, was foolish to entrust his “comeback” star-vehicle to screenwriter Mitch Glazer, who never had one.

“Rock the Kasbah” is an old school/Old Murray comedy, the type he would have knocked out of the park in his mid-80s-early-90s heyday. If, that is, you could convince him not to sleepwalk through it.

But here, playing a has-been rock promoter who discovers a culture-shifting singing sensation while on a USO tour in bloodied, embattled Afghanistan, we only get a flash or two of the Old Murray. This lame, laugh-starved script (Glazer wrote “Scrooged” for him( makes Murray look like an Old Man — not a funny old man or a Grumpy old man (see the fine “St. Vincent” for that). Just old and not really up to trying too hard.

Richie Lanz (Murray) may be working out of a seedy Van Nuys hotel, conning talentless singers out of expense and promotion money. But he’s got the photos on the wall — him, much younger, with rock’s most famous and infamous. And he’s got the stories, about discovering Madonna.

“Did I tell you my Stevie Nicks story?”

His last shot seems to be Ronnie, played by actress-singer Zooey Deschanel. He has her singing covers to a backing track in a local bar. That’s where the USO promoter finds them, and drunkenly books them both to entertain the troops in a war zone.

Deschanel is (briefly) the life of the movie, melting down and freaking out from the moment they get on an Afghan airliner to her frantic hook-up with a mercenary (“Contractor”) named “Bombay” (Bruce Willis) who gets her out of the country, taking Richie’s cash and passport with her.

Here Richie is, a legend in his own mind, a fast-talking deal-maker, stuck in a dangerous place with no way of getting out. These two American arms dealers (the hilarious Danny McBride and the gonzo Scott Caan) seek him out and befriend him.

“You’re in Kabul. Man up!”

Yeah, “a coupla months ago, we were Herbal-life dealers.” But now, they’ve got a paying gig for Richie — deliver some ammo to a remote Pashtun tribe. Scared and dazed, he accepts. And that’s where he hears Salima (Leem Lubany). She’s obsessed with her country’s version of TV’s “America’s Got Talent,” “Afghan Star.” And she sings Cat Stevens ballads and accompanies herself on the guitar.

Richie has his new mission. The fact that there’s an “honor killing” in her future for “shaming” her father and culture for showing her lip-glossed/made up face and singing in English on TV doesn’t get in the way of Richie’s dream.

Kate Hudson plays another hooker-with-the-heart of gold whom Richie draws into the deal. Arian Moayed is the ’70s Soul-obsessed taxi driver/translator who translates for Richie, who gets mixed up in a tribal conflict and has to talk himself out of one gun-to-his-face jam after another.

And therein lies the problem. The lines Glazer has Murray spout to win people over and “close the deal” — this deal, that deal — aren’t funny or interesting or convincing. Murray, who has latterly made a new career for himself doing killer cameos, stinging supporting parts that play on his still-intact reservoir of cool — can’t manage the “fast-talking” part of the role. Aside from “St. Vincent,” he’s not been up to doing that sort of heavy-lifting in a leading role in years.

Director Barry Levinson is a long way from “Rain Man” himself, and cannot find funny in a situation that seems rife with it. A few scenes suggest the absurd dichotomies of “Good Morning, Vietnam” — McBride and Caan drunkenly hooting and hollering through Kabul in the back of an ancient LTD convertible. A CONVERTIBLE! But this whole USO tour gone wrong thing has been done often, and better, in films such as “The Sapphires” or the James Brown bio-pic “Get on Up.”

The big idea here, that a woman might break through the repressive patriarchy of the Middle East and change people’s hearts, is handled clumsily. In 2008, a real Pashtun woman, Lima Sahar, tried to manage that and the film is sort of inspired by her story. But the fictional comedy surrounding it isn’t funny enough and this third act gravitas doesn’t mesh with it.

Salima in the movie sings perhaps the only Western songbook theoretically approved by the Islamic world. But the movie’s most tone-deaf assumption is the idea that Yusuf Islam, the pop singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, is so totally rehabilitated that we can listen to his music — on the soundtrack and sung onstage — and not remember how he became the Western face for Islamic intolerance, thanks to his conversion and pronouncements on things like the death sentence (fatwa) hurled at writers who dared to criticize the religion-that-won’t-be-criticized.

Murray does what he can, sings “Smoke on the Water” with “Saturday Night Live” era gusto and tries to do something different with Richie. And that’s where Glazer and he go so wrong. It’s not originality that would have paid off. All that was called for here was a cover tune, just a few scenes with Murray’s Greatest Hits, preferably not phoned in.

MPAA Rating:R for language including sexual references, some drug use and brief violence

Cast: Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Zooey Deschanel, Leem Lubany, Kate Hudson, Danny McBride, Scott Caan
Credits: Directed by Barry Levinson, script by Mitch Glazer. An Open Road release.

Running time: 1:40