STEP

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: A-

Here is a documentary you are bound to leave filled with joy and hope, unless you are a deeply cynical and suspicious person. It certainly hits all the right notes, sticking to the tried and true formula of feel-good stories about inspiring individuals overcoming hardships.

It's all about context, of course. It's one thing to celebrate a film that focuses on a group of young black women spending their senior year trying to win a regional championship with the step team they founded in the sixth grade -- and that is absolutely worth celebrating. The year in question occurs in the wake of the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, and the ensuing violent protests. The young women incorporate Black Lives Matter themes into their performances, adding weight to their already plainly obvious talent.

One thing Step fails to do, however, is address the degree to which these young women are themselves privileged -- and I mean that only comparatively. The clearly come from families with their own challenges comparable to those of many others. But they also attend an all-girls charter school that focuses on getting the entire graduating class accepted into colleges, and they do this as a result of having won a lottery.

I couldn't help but wonder: how compelling might the stories be of the exponentially larger number of young black women who aren't so lucky? Who don't win this lottery? That's just not how these movies are done. Filmmakers and audiences alike want to see the stories about winners, be they through hard work or by chance, or both. And to be fair, there's a healthy mix of both for these young women. Without this school, after all, none of these kids would have had these opportunities.

How did director Amanda Lipitz know this team was the right one to follow, though? I always wonder this when watching documentaries about teams attending competitions. Do they have a crew who follow countless participants or teams, and then in the end focus the editing on select kids who go the distance? I must admit to a moderate amount of my own suspicions. When it comes to the faculty we see in the school, or the family members: how much might they be playing to the cameras? Surely having a camera crew following you around is a massive distraction.

Therein lies the trick, though: the editing. God knows how much footage wound up on the cutting room floor, but what's onscreen emanates nothing but authenticity, genuine hopes and dreams, some nearly crushed and some rising out of ashes. I couldn't help but to be moved by this movie and the people in it, both the kids and several of their parents. Only about four of the students get a whole lot of focus. Again I wonder about the others on the team. How much time did they spend in front of the camera, expecting to see themselves in a movie? All this just goes with the territory.

At least the entire team gets showcased in several step performances. If you don't know -- as I did not -- step is a percussive dance, using no music, creating rhythms through the sounds and stomps and claps and chants. It's a little like Bring It On but without all the cattiness. Instead of trying to elicit "school spirit," it's a dance that presents as an art with its own merits. And these kids are very good at it. I actually wish there were more full routines in Step than it has.

Ultimately, Step emotionally manipulates its audience just like any effective movie does. It's all in the manner of telling the story, and this could have been told many other ways. To its credit, this is the way that works best, the way that gets people talking about it, and gets people watching it. These young women may be luckier than a lot of their peers, but that doesn't make them any less worthy of our attention.

The students of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women channel their artistic energy into step.

Overall: B+

COLUMBUS

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A
Editing: B+

Who knew that Columbus, Indiana, population 46,000, was a mecca for modern architecture? People who have seen Columbus know; several specimens of said architecture are featured in the film.

The population of Columbus the film is much smaller. It's mostly about a platonic relationship that blossoms under peculiar circumstances between a young woman only a year out of high school, Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), and a middle-aged man, Jin (John Cho), who has come to town to visit his Korean father who has gone into a coma. This father, who is only seen in the distance briefly in the opening scene, is himself a well-known architect who was slated to give a talk at the local library; Casey, who has an appreciation for her local architecture, was planning to attend the talk. She meets Jin only by chance, smoking cigarettes on either side of a fence.

Everyone smokes in this movie, incidentally. It's so rare to see it happening on screen anymore -- in movies or on television -- that I found it almost distracting. Nearly every scene shows one or more people smoking. Casey and Jin are smoking constantly. It made me wonder if this is a reflection of different smoking culture in the Midwest. As it happens, Indiana indeed has the seventh-highest percentage of smokers among U.S. states, 22.9% of adults. I've never been to Indiana, but to an outsider perspective, Columbus seems to have made an effort at authenticity to its setting.

I was moved by this film, although it's hard to characterize exactly why. It's easy to see it boring some people out of their minds. There's no particular action of any kind in it. It's not even the kind of movie that would be known as being dialogue-driven, although technically it is. This is a very quiet film, in a way I found sort of soothing. It seems just short of realistic, the way the characters always speak to each other in quiet, pleasantly measured tones -- even in the one scene where the two principal characters say hurtful things to each other.

The cinematography, by Elisha Christian, is the key element, and it beautifully showcases much of the local architecture the characters spend a great deal of time discussing. Otherwise it features in one way or another in the background as the characters face their particular predicaments. Jin struggles with handling the possibly pending death of a distant father. Casey resists opportunities available to her outside of town because she feels her recovering addict mother needs her too much.

Another treat: Parker Posey, the longtime darling of indie movies, as the architect-father's longtime assistant. Rory Culkin shows up as Casey's coworker friend with possibly unrecognized affections for her. The performances across the board are understated, but serve the story well. It all comes together to create an almost dreamlike sensibility. Without exception, they all speak softly. Only once does a character even briefly shout, and it's not a particularly key moment in the film, though it is important.

It's nice to see John Cho finally showcased as a leading man. Haley Lu Richardson has an almost celestial glow about her, and looks like she could be Jennifer Grey's daughter. These two have an unlikely chemistry that proves compelling, even as they talk about something as dry as architecture. I suppose if you enjoy quietly pleasant movies and have an interest in architecture, then this is a movie for you. I happen to fit that profile.

But, I would also argue this film transcends those parameters. This is a film about very different people who cross paths by chance and connect in a convincingly organic way. It's perfect counter-programming to the dumb noise otherwise found in the latest blockbuster.

Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho discuss all that's underappreciated in Columbus.

Overall: B+

THE DARK TOWER

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C+
Special Effects: B

I'm trying to figure out who exactly this movie is for. By all accounts, it bears only vague reference to the source material, Stephen King's Dark Tower series of novels. Not that I ever think a movie is particularly beholden to its supposed source material -- I have long advocated judging a movie on its own merits. The thing is, this Dark Tower has hardly any merit of its own. It's incomprehensible, its premise is flawed at best, and it dialogue -- by a team of four writers -- ranges from abysmal to forgettable.

If this movie has any merit, it is its star, Idris Elba, who delivers a performance unworthy of the film itself. Here is an exemplary actor, someone who commands the screen, who gives life to otherwise clunky dialogue. It hardly matters who the director is, Elba shows up to elevate the material.

This material still isn't very high even after being elevated, though. At least Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets had spellbinding special effects. Then again, it was also way too long. The Dark Tower, conversely, is a mercifully short 95 minutes and has merely serviceable special effects. There's a sequence with an impressively rendered monster. The main issue with that sequence is it lacks clarity regarding where the monster comes from and why it's here.

The Dark Tower wants to have it both ways, presenting a story meant to be epic but truncating what should be a complex story to the point of incoherence. Trying to explain it here would just be a waste of time, except to say that it features rat-people who wear human faces as masks. Huh? The Dark Tower of the title apparently protects the universe from monsters that live outside of it, and the Man in Black is using children's minds to destroy it. There's this one boy from "Keystone Earth" whose mind is the most powerful and therefore the most sought after. Are you following this?

Matthew McConaughey is the Man in Black, and he proves not to be the best choice as the villain in a would-be blockbuster fantasy thriller. He's not particularly believable as a big, bad, evil dude, and as such, he lowers the same material Edris Elba heightens. McConaughey never quite comfortably fits into the role. Tom Taylor, as the boy who "shines" (meaning he has telepathic ability; when did this become a mashup with The Shining?), is somewhat inconsistent but fine in the context of the mess that surrounds him.

I might have enjoyed The Dark Tower slightly more if it didn't take itself quite so seriously. Instead, it's so misguided in its attempts at gravitas that it can't even manage to be enjoyable as a bad movie. It just gets lost in its own hodgepodge blandness. There are subtle attempts at humor when Elba's Gunslinger leaves his own dimension and navigates the boy's world in New York City, but it never quite works. A clear tone is never settled upon: is this movie confusingly dumb, or is it forgettably chaotic? I'd suggest you be the judge, but I can't suggest you see this movie.

Idris Elba and Tom Taylor search in vain for meaning in the lives they lead in this movie.

Overall: C+

DETROIT

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

This must be acknowledged up front: Detroit is a movie steeped in black American history, starring a whole bunch of mostly male black actors -- directed by a white woman, which is a bit of a mystery. Black directors do exist; it could not possibly have been difficult to find one to tell this story; one is left to wonder what different choices might have been made with one -- of either gender.

But, okay: let's say we have no idea who directed Detroit. It's an objectively impressive film. It's just as relevant, however, that I say that as a white guy writing this review, so take that however you feel is appropriate.

The story starts with a fairly long stretch of the chaos that made up the 1967 riots in the city of the title, taking a macro view of longstanding racial unrest. Then the focus narrows, organically, to a single incident in the Algiers Motel, where three white Detroit Police officers terrorized several black men, and two young white women, and killed three of the young men. They were there, ostensibly, to investigate what they thought was sniper fire, depicted here as a black man deliberately shooting a starter pistol toward nearby cops embroiled in the riots, just to stir up trouble.

None of Detroit is particularly easy to watch, which is as it should be. The scenario and the history and the details are all complicated, but it all still comes down to a mostly-white police force, as stated in the opening titles, "known for its aggression." The film spends a great deal of time on the incident at the motel, with the cops lining several occupants against a wall and demanding to know who had a gun. Several of the people being questioned were not even in the same room from which the starter pistol was fired, but when they say they know nothing about any gun, the cops are convinced they are lying.

All of this is both preceded and followed by what we are clearly to understand is murder by the police. I almost feel bad for Will Poulter, who plays the ring leader of these three cops; he plays him so well that it's easy to hate him.

This is quite the ensemble cast, which leaves Detroit without any star. This is not the kind of story that demands one anyway, as the focus is rightly on the events themselves. Some familiar faces do pop up: John Boyega as a security guard working nearby who predictably winds up a suspect; John Krasinski as the cops' defense lawyer. Most of the rest of the cast is not as familiar, but across the board the performances are solid. If anyone deserves to be singled out, it's Algee Smith, as the lead singer of a group of musicians who happened to be at the motel. He gets more screen time than most and he serves it well.

And what this ensemble does, as a team, is present America with some hard truths. A lot of what goes on in this movie, you could do nothing more than update the hairstyles and fashions, and it could be set in the present day. It's not long before you realize that Detroit is reflecting a shameful American tradition of police being acquitted for shooting and killing unarmed black people.

Every incident is different, with its own unique set of circumstances, and here director Kathryn Bigelow focusing on just this one case. But it's also one of the earliest high-profile cases that long ago established a disturbing trend, where they all end in the same way: known killers escaping punishment.

If you think a movie like 12 Years a Slave provides an easy out by focusing on one guy who got a happy ending after years of hardship rather than on the countless more who lived entirely hopeless lives under the existential threat of oppressors, then Detroit might be the movie for you. This story features characters who find some level of peace only through death or resignation, the sacrifice of hope and dreams, resilience in the face of unchanging injustice.

These things are precisely why Detroit needs to be seen. It's hard to imagine many people wanting to see it, for wildly varying reasons depending on the viewer's on socioeconomic background. Usually a movie like this goes out of its way to leave audiences with a sense of uplift or inspiration, and this one merely hints at it, until veering back to a specific event that in hindsight represents the lasting effects of institutionalized racism to this day. America is in desperate need of taking a hard look at itself, and here is a movie doing its part.

Well, it may be difficult to watch, but it's also almost impossible to look away. That's how skillfully assembled this movie is. As soon as it starts, you know nothing good is coming, but you still most know what it will be. The trick will be getting people to turn their gaze on it to begin with. To say you'll be glad you did wouldn't be quite accurate, but there is a certain satisfaction in something that is compelling and provocative in the right ways.

*whispers* This movie is going to make you uncomfortable.

Overall: A-

AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

Here is a movie with a vital message, one that we all need to hear, with visuals we all need to see. Consider just one of many examples, but among the most important: a graph that former Vice President Al Gore shows in the latest version of the slide show he's now been giving for nearly two decades, showing in the plainest terms how global temperature averages have shifted higher, acknowledging that there are still colder than average days but -- and this is an important point -- they occur far less frequently, with an explosion of hotter than average and extremely hot days. Those who listen to politicians who hold up snowballs in Congress to supposedly prove global warming is a hoax would do well to take one look at an image like this.

The thing is, those people don't want to look at these images. This issue is even more politicized now than it was when the first movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was released eleven years ago -- when George W. Bush was still the president. And that film, in its context at the time, had the power to get people fired up, spreading information -- and visual proof -- about this issue to more people than had ever been managed before.

At the time, I wrote: Anyone who outright refuses to believe in global warming as theory rather than fact is likely going to be wasting their time watching this movie -- you might as well try and turn a fundamentalist Christian into an atheist in 100 minutes. But for anyone on the fence, who isn't sure what to believe -- and there are a great many -- then this movie is for you. If An Inconvenient Truth doesn't convince fence-sitters, then they weren't really sitting on the fence to begin with.

But who will even see this follow-up? Certainly not fence-sitters, of whom there are now fewer still. Therein lies the inherent problem with An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, with which comes an unmistakable feeling that we've long since passed the point of no return, and perhaps we had even when the first film was released. This would be the case even if Hillary Clinton were sitting in the White House right now -- and, of course, this film offers the 2016 election as a major sticking point.

To be sure, it's inspiring to see the passion in Al Gore and his talks. He is shown here leading Climate Reality Leadership Corps Trainings, showing others how to give these talks on their own -- although as presented onscreen in the film, it's basically an updated version of the presentation he gave before. He gets fired up, and when you're watching, he makes you want to get fired up too.

That said, Truth to Power falls victim to some minor pitfalls of many a movie sequel, just in terms of its presentation. Remember the dynamic impact of the "off the charts" graph he showed in the 2006 film, using an electronic life to show the dramatic difference in temperature increases? He does a similar thing here, although it's with the exponential increase in solar energy investments. It provides some much-needed hope, to be sure, but unfortunately having used the gimmick once already, its impact is diminished. He even opens his talk this time with an updated version of his "I used to be the future President of the United States" line, now offering an anecdote about a woman who mistook him for someone who looks like Al Gore. Beat for beat, An Inconvenient Sequel follows nearly the exact same format as An Inconvenient Truth. This was maybe not the best approach, because it lends an air to the "been there, done that" feeling that serves as a barrier to calls for action.

A lot of things have happened in the sphere of climate change in the past decade, of course, from the increased frequency of severe storms (long-ago predicted) to the milestone of the Paris Agreement. This film doesn't state it explicitly, but certainly infers that Gore himself was key to getting the most significant holdout, India, to come around. It basically presents Gore as the hero of the Paris Agreement, and I am left a little skeptical -- it could not possibly have been that simple. For an issue as critical, and as unfairly criticized, as climate change, this kind of borderline misleading storytelling is dubious at best.

This movie is still packed with plenty of updated, vastly important information, and most people who care about the environment will find it suitably compelling. Some might even find some surprising hopefulness in it. Even I did, in the midst of my lack of faith in effecting any real change on this issue at this juncture. After all, Gore visits Georgetown, Texas, where the mayor calls it "the reddest city in the reddest county in Texas," and it is poised to become the largest U.S. city to rely solely on renewable energy. The man makes the practical argument that should appeal to most conservatives: it's now the cheapest option for providing city utilities. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to contact your own local government and demand they work swiftly toward the same goals.

The point, which An Inconvenient Sequel arguably doesn't hammer hard enough, is that industry trends are bending quickly toward renewable energy, regardless of what the skeptics (and the outright ignorant) think. What the film doesn't quite address, on the other hand, is exactly what impact the "turning point" he feels the environmental movement is poised to make will have on the tipping point of irreversible effects and damage of climate change. When, exactly, will the streets of Miami Beach stop being flooded by high tides that never behaved this way before?

Again, I fear the damage has been done. An Inconvenient Truth made us feel like we could do something to mitigate the damage, and An Inconvenient Sequel shows us what we still can and should do, but doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the same kind of potential. It looks increasingly like that ship has sailed, and it sailed through waters that were once covered in ice. I guess there's something to be said for the idea of knowing the war is likely lost but still refusing to go down without a fight. That's a fairly cynical attitude that I will own, and which this film absolutely does not advocate. But neither does it inspire a proportionate amount of hope to combat that cynicism.

Al Gore can't be faulted for any of this. This is a man who fought hard for attention to this issue for decades, and for that he should be commended, and perhaps even rewarded with attention to both of his films. This second film's direction is not quite as focused, but its message is clear and transcends its storytelling flaws. It's just not liable to change anyone's mind, is all. We'll just keep on using severe winters as straw men until we choke on baked smog in the summer, as the world keeps turning until it sheds itself of this cancer called humanity. In the meantime, a few of us will vacillate between feelings of inspiration and futility, sometimes within the space of a 98-minute documentary.

There goes the planet! Al Gore visits a rapidly melting ice sheet.

Overall: B

LANDLINE

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

Jenny Slate is a singular personality, and her presence alone brings a peculiar charm to just about anything she's in. You could say the same of Edie Falco, who here plays her mother. Ditto John Turturro, who plays her father. She and the younger woman who plays her high-school aged sister (Abby Quinn, a match for all around her) suspect their father is having an affair.

In the midst of this, Dana (Slate) is having her own affair, freaking out in the lead-up to marrying her fiancé (Jay Duplass). For some reason, all of this is set during the mid-nineties, which I suppose justifies the title of the film, in a way. Young Ali (Quinn) has her own landline phone in her bedroom, which has to be taken away from her as punishment at one point. No one in this movie has smart phones. Honestly there's something weirdly refreshing about that, almost a relief. There is something to be said for personalities getting through more clearly without devices serving as distractions and barriers.

I can't say there's anything particularly vital about this story, and especially in the beginning, I found myself almost wondering what was the point. But then the story picks up, and the two sisters join forces in trying to solve the mystery of their father. Ali has found oddly written love notes on his very 1990s Apple Computer.

The thing is, these two young women feel very much like real sisters. The whole family feels very real, in their New York City way of veering between matter-of-factness and neuroses. Before long, thanks to truly solid performances all around, you've become invested in every one of these relationships. The sisters' relationship with each other. Their relationship with their parents. The parents' relationship with each other. And in a fairly breezy 97 minutes, the perfect amount of time and attention is paid to all of them.

Landline is ostensibly a comedy, and I wanted it to be funnier than it was. I did get a few good laughs out of it, and in the end was perfectly satisfied with it anyway, because my investment in these characters was well rewarded. This is the kind of movie that has a surface appearance of being ordinary or generic, but gradually reveals itself to be a rare treat.

Overall: B+

ATOMIC BLONDE

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Let's cut to the chase and talk about the sex in Atomic Blonde. Do I have your attention? I hope so! Because this movie has one sex scene, which star and co-producer Charlize Theron fervently supported as soon as screenwriter Kurt Johnstad suggested it, and it features no men. It's between Theron and supporting costar Sofia Boutella; it starts as a one-night stand; it's devoid of the usual clichés of onscreen lesbian sex; it's literally the only thing even remotely approaching a romantic subplot in the movie. What's more, in years past or in lesser hands, this would be a scene played to titillate straight men, with a character still intended to prefer men. Here, none of that is the case, and the relationship is as incidental -- yet integral to the plot -- as any fling that might be had by James Bond.

All of this significant, and further establishes Charlize Theron, in the wake of her amazing work in Mad Max Fury Road, as a paragon of kick-ass women in modern action movies. You know what she does to most of the men in this movie? She beats the shit out of them!

And she gets her ass kicked too, mind you -- which, as it happens, is also part of what elevates the film. Too long have we seen women who kick ass in movies suffer no visible bruises. David Leitch, here directing his first feature film after a long career as a stunt coordinator and fight designer, goes out of his way to make sure we see the physical consequences of this woman's fighting. There's a fair amount of naked Theron in this movie; very little of it is sexy. Most of it is badass.

Atomic Blonde is to be commended for respecting the intelligence of its audience by refusing to beat it over the head with action sequences as soon as the first scene, and instead takes some time to get the story underway. The story could have still used some improvement, or at least some clarity; I spent a fair amount of time finding it a challenge to keep up, due to a fairly convoluted and occasionally incomprehensible plot.

Someone has a list of double agents, in 1989 Berlin -- the fall of the Berlin Wall being a fascinating backdrop to this story -- and Lorraine Broughton (Theron), among others, are after it. That's all you really need to know, really. Another agent comes to her aid -- or does he? -- and that is James McAvoy, playing a bit of a suspicious blowhard who, thankfully, it never even seems to occur to Lorraine to fall for. The photographer she's far more compelled by (Sofia Boutella) is actually connected to them both. Lorraine is warned to "trust no one," and admittedly that is a bit of an overused concept, but this movie takes it to some refreshing places.

The action sequences are found deeper into the story than usual, and they are so worth the wait, I would argue they are alone what make Atomic Blonde worth seeing. This is a movie that takes a far more realistic approach than the typical action hero with movie-superhuman strengths (which even applies to Bond anymore), and as these people are beating each other to a pulp, you begin to cringe at the pain they must be feeling. Through it all, the fight choreography is truly impressive.

And it occasionally features subtle, artistic touches. Look closely at one of the final fight sequences, in which a gun victim's blood splatters perfectly onto the giant red lips of a woman's portrait on the wall.

This being 1989, the soundtrack is a stellar collection of eighties Brit pop, although I have mixed feelings about the vast majority of the songs being from the early eighties rather than at the end of the decade when the film was actually set. Still, the music, the set design, particularly the costuming, how it's all shot with neon lines, and the action set pieces -- it all comes together to supersede the minor flaws of the script and make for a movie that gets more thrilling as it goes along.

Charlize Theron kicks ass with style.

Overall: B+

LADY MACBETH

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Lady Macbeth has something going for it that few films manage these days: an element of surprise. And I don't mean jump-scares -- although the story goes into a direction where you might start to expect them. This movie ended with me thinking that, in a way, it is a horror film.

It begins, though, much like any 19th-century period drama. Katherine (a stellar Florence Pugh) is married off like property, to a man who, for some reason, will not have sex with her. Katherine lives with both her husband and her father-in-law, the latter being increasingly frustrated with her not performing her "wifely duties." They guy hates his father arguably more than Katherine does. Things get odd pretty early on: Katherine's husband clearly finds her attractive, if he asks her to strip and stand facing against the wall while he sits in a chair in their bedroom and jerks off. But, why? Is he refusing to impregnate his wife just to spite his father? I never could quite figure this out.

Both the husband and father-in-law leave the estate for an extended period of time, leaving Katherine to get a taste of independence. She falls in love with Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), a worker on the estate who is much closer to her own age. This ignites a passion no one had any idea she had. From here on, this woman goes to some stunning lengths in her quest to keep Sebastian in her life, and in her bed.

Neither of these people are particularly worth rooting for, mind you. It seems in the beginning like Katherine is to be the hero of this story, but that's not quite how it is. Neither is it the case with Sebastian, who is introduced under rather shady circumstances: he and his colleagues have snatched the maid, Anna (Naomi Ackie), stripped her, and have her suspended from a stable ceiling inside a sheet. Katherine walks in on this, sees Sebastian, and it's like psycho-love at first sight.

Anna is arguably the only character worthy of sympathy. Things don't exactly go well for her at any point, though the same could be said of any of these characters. Lady Macbeth takes some truly dark turns, one after another, going to surprising depths.

It's truly compelling nonetheless. Even when little is going on, you can't take your eyes off this movie, or in particular off of Florence Pugh, who is a formidable talent. I want to see her in more things.

Director William Oldroyd refuses to engage in hand-holding, with slightly mixed results. Events occur that the characters appear to understand, but all the details of which are not revealed to the audience much later. I was slightly confused a few times. But the lead performance is so great, and the scenery so lush, this is easy to forgive.

And if nothing else, I have to respect a movie that successfully redefines its own terms as it goes along, and still manages to succeed on those terms. Lady Macbeth, both the woman and this movie, is genuinely disturbing. Even anyone who feels like she's on their side should watch their back.

You do not want to fuck with this bitch.

Overall: B+

[Archive of older B-grade movies on LiveJournal]

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS

Directing: C
Acting: C-
Writing: C
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B+

Anyone who expects Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets to be a match to the cult favorite The Fifth Element will be sorely disappointed. Luc Besson, who directed both films twenty years apart, clearly intended for Valerian to be basically The Sixth Element in spirit. But, we should have learned our lesson from his last piece of garbage, 2014's Lucy, which was as brainless as it thought it was compelling.

There's a similar problem with Valerian, which is as dull as it thinks it's clever. It's also way too long -- 137 minutes -- for a movie packed with lame attempts at humor that falls flat, and ineptly cast actors with zero chemistry or screen presence. And these flaws are consistent: the dialogue is not once even remotely funny, much as it tries; the actors are not in the least bit charming, their clear and confident conviction otherwise notwithstanding.

Where did Besson find these actors, anyway? The budget for this film was reportedly $117.2 million, but clearly none of that was spent on the cast -- although Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, and Rihanna all show up in supporting parts. Only Ethan Hawke seems to be having any fun, but none of that extends to the audience. In 31-year-old Dane DeHaan as "Major Valerian" and 24-year-old Cara Delevingne as "Sergeant Laureline," Besson seems to have found a low-rent version of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a low-rent version of Emma Stone, respectively. To say they lack personality would be an insult to mannequins.

Strangely, even with several major players in bit parts -- Rutger Hauer, Herbie Hancock, even John Goodman as the voice of one of the CGI aliens -- Valerian still comes across overall as a low-rent Fifth Element. That earlier film was hardly a masterpiece, but it stood apart, succeeded on its own terms, and featured charismatic actors that elevated otherwise trite material. Valerian has no such saving graces.

Unless you want to count the special effects, maybe? A whole lot of this movie is indeed a feast for the eyes, arguably more so than any film Luc Besson has ever made. You could even argue he overdoes it, stuffing the frame with effect-laden set pieces in evident overcompensation for countless shortcomings. The thing is, nothing really makes up for a script that lands with a thud.

This isn't even "so bad it's good." It's just tedious, overlong, forgettable. Does the story even matter? Some critics have lauded the opening sequences, in which we see the evolution of the International Space Station over centuries into the future, until the international astronauts meeting each other become intergalactic, an optimistic view of our progression into an increasingly egalitarian future that moves into the extra-terrestrial. I found it to be a tad pretentious. Star Trek already examined such themes, did it fifty years ago, and did it better.

It's this space station, by the way, that becomes the "City of a Thousand Planets" of the subtitle, a place where representative populations come together to pool all the knowledge in the known universe. It's also where most of the story's action takes place, although it never becomes clear exactly why the endangered species of humanoids on which the plot hinges has to be gathered there.

A group of them kidnap a military commander from the Human Federation (Owen) while Valerian and Laureline have been sent to serve as bodyguards during some kind of negotiation, the details of which I can't remember, and which don't matter. What this movie wants you to know is that Valerian wants Laureline -- who is also his professional partner -- to marry him. It also wants you to care, to be invested in whether Laureline will ever accept his proposal, in the midst of all this fantastical action, including a fairly engaging set piece involving the movement into another dimension. This jumping between dimensions is what largely sets the story in motion, after which audience capacity for emotional investment drops dramatically.

You can guess whether the two leads wind up together in the end. The suspense is killing no one.

Valerian might have worked better with a different cast. It would certainly have worked better with a different script. As it is, we get forgettable dialogue phoned in by generic performers who disappear in derivative if well-rendered CGI scenery.

Dane DeHaan tries in vain to figure out how this movie will appeal to anyone.

Overall: C+

[Archive of older C-grade movies on LiveJournal]

DUNKIRK

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Dunkirk is fine.

Judging by the critical reception, though, you'd expect it to be extraordinary. By far the best-reviewed wide-release movie of the year so far, it has a score of 92% at Rotten Tomatoes, and an even higher score (which is very unusual) of 94 at MetaCritic. It seems like everyone and their mother likes this movie, and the few outliers are expected to be mere contrarians.

I'm not quite a contrarian: there is much to like about this movie. I'm just not going to tell you it's great. I'm not even going to tell you there's any pressing need for you to pay for a ticket to see it in the theatre. Dunkirk is not offered in 3D -- thankfully -- but it is available at IMAX theatres, which comes with its own price premiums, and I can tell you there is no need to waste money on that.

If by chance you don't know, Dunkirk is the name of the beach where over 300,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated from the north of France in 1940. This was a year and a half before the U.S. could be bothered to get involved in World War II thanks to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The stories yet to be told about the second World War remain vast, but writer-director Christopher Nolan takes a comparatively micro view of this single military operation.

Much has been made of how much tension there is in Dunkirk, but the thing is, that's nearly all its got. Its greatest asset, which is mostly what creates the tension, is in its editing. In true Nolan style, a while into the film, you realize you're seeing different plot puzzle pieces fit together. The story's focus is four-pronged: three different boats or ships, and a couple of fighter planes, and how they all eventually intersect. There is indeed something undeniably satisfying about how all of these things eventually fit together.

Being rated PG-13, though, there's a certain lack of gritty realism. This, combined with a months-long marketing campaign positioning Dunkirk in a slightly misleading way as a Summer Event Movie, made me expect something a little more action-oriented, with Nolan's involvement creating an added expectation of cinematic artfulness. There are elements of both, but Nolan never quite goes the distance on either front.

There's plenty of pointed chaos, to be sure. But there's something essential missing from Dunkirk, and it is character development. It has almost none. This is more of a portrait of this evacuation, focusing on just a few people, but the camera simply follows them around through harrowing situations more than it picks up on anything in the way of individual conflicts. There's a certain emotional heft a movie like this should have, and Dunkirk lacks it.

It's certainly gripping, though. Although it barely falls short of qualifying as an action movie, there's plenty of action in it. The cast includes a couple of Nolan regulars: Tom Hardy as one of the fighter pilots; Cillian Murphy as a shell shocked soldier rescued from a capsized boat. It also features Kenneth Branagh and James D'Arcy as officers who do little more than walk around staring at everything happening on the beach. And perhaps most famously, Harry Styles is featured among the group of young soldiers just desperately trying to find their way onto one of the boats.

None of them talk much. The actor who gets the most screen time, Mark Rylance as the civilian boat captain taking his teenage son and young friend out to take part in the evacuation, also gets the most lines, and even that's not a whole lot. For the most part, it's boats and planes, bombs and explosions, capsizing and nose diving, all set to a score that clearly evokes a ticking clock.

There's a strange dichotomy to Dunkirk. It's impossible to be bored watching this movie, but it's also impossible to think of it as a truly accurate portrayal of what went on in the real-life event. It's still very much a Hollywood movie, clever in subtle ways but pointedly clever nonetheless. Unlike, say, the truly graphic extended opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, it has less to say about the horrors of war than about how a director with a certain amount of power can turn war into ultimately inconsequential art. Because realistically, years from now, while people will still be talking about the best war movies ever made, no one will still be talking about Dunkirk.

Overall: B