REVIEW: Technology employed by sensitive hands brings to vivid life a work that would have been inconceivable onscreen until very recently in "Life of Pi." Ang Lee, that great chameleon among contemporary directors, achieves an admirable sense of wonder in this tall tale about a shipwrecked teenager stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, a yarn that has been adapted from the compellingly peculiar best-seller with its beguiling preposterousness intact.

Like the venerable all-purpose entertainments of Hollywood’s classical era, this exceptionally beautiful 3D production should prove accessible to and embraceable by all manner of audiences, signaling substantial commercial possibilities domestically and probably even moreso internationally. 

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Yann Martel’s 2001 novel was one of those out-of-the-blue one-shots, a book with a madly fanciful premise so deftly handled that it won the Man Booker Prize and sold 7 million copies. Part survival story, part youthful fable, part grade-school spiritual rumination and assessment of humanity’s place in the animal kingdom, it’s man versus nature with a quizzically philosophical spin that’s easy to digest even for kids.

It’s not surprising that it took producer Gil Netter a decade to get the film made, as technology would not have permitted it to be realized, at least in anything close to its current form, until the past few years. Shot on location in India as well as in a giant tank in Taiwan where the open-water effects scenes were made, "Life of Pi" is an unusual example of anything-is-possible technology put at the service of a humanistic and intimate story rather than something that smacks of a manufactured product.

VIDEO: New 'Life of Pi' Trailer Features Irrfan Khan and Rafe Spall

The first enchantment is the town of Pondicherry, a former French colony in southern India that looks like paradise on Earth, nowhere moreso than at the zoo run by the father of young Pi. The nimble and faithful script by David Magee ("Finding Neverland") packs a good deal of character and cultural background into the first half-hour, humorously sketching the odd watery and mathematical implications of the protagonist’s name; neatly relating his unconflicted adoption of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam at age 12; portraying the warm family life he enjoys with his parents and older brother; and topped off with a taste of budding first love.

But hard times prompt his father to announce a move to Canada, where he will sell all the animals. A full hour is set at sea, beginning with a nocturnal storm and horrible shipwreck. When the air clears, the only survivors sharing space on a 27-foot lifeboat are Pi, an injured zebra, a maniacal hyena, a dour orangutan, a rat and -- hidden from sight for a spell under a tarp -- a large tiger.

Hunger and the law of the jungle assure that the population onboard is shortly reduced to two. To nonreaders of the novel, incredulity over Pi’s ability to co-exist with the tiger -- which goes by the name of Richard Parker -- is carefully addressed, and it’s essential that Pi proves adept at fashioning a makeshift raft that connects to the tiger’s lair by a rope.

Still, 227 days is a very long time to keep fed and maintain your wits on the open sea for both man and beast, and this floating journey is marked by ordeal (this must be the first film to present the spectacle of a seasick tiger) and such startling sights as a sudden flurry of flying fish, luminous jellyfish setting the nighttime sea aglow, a breaching whale and another enormous storm that looks to spell the end for Pi and Richard Parker.

But the final half-hour offers an other-worldly pit stop before coming to roost in a framing story in which the adult Pi tells his tall tale to a wide-eyed writer in a literary conceit that, at the very end, spells things out rather too explicitly.

VIDEO: Life of Pi' Trailer Wows With a Mighty Storm and 3D Adventure

Meticulous care is evident in every aspect of the film. All three actors playing Pi are outstanding. The lion’s (or tiger’s) share of the burden falls on 17-year-old Suraj Sharma, the only human on view for half the time, obliged to act in a vacuum and convincingly represent all the physical demands. Lee looked at 3,000 candidates for the role (deliberately avoiding Bollywood talent) and found an unknown whose emotional facility is quite impressive. Ayush Tandon is captivating as the sponge that is young Pi, but absolutely imperative to the film’s success are the heart, lucidity and gravityIrrfan Khan provides as the grown-up Pi looking back at his experience.

Gerard Depardieu is in briefly to embody hulking menace as a nasty French cook aboard the ill-fated cargo ship.

STORY: Tobey Maguire Cut From Oscar Contender 'Life of Pi'

Creating a plausible, ever-changing physical world was the first and over-arching technical challenge met by the effects team. The extra step here was rendering a tiger that would be believable in every way, from its violent movements and threatening stares to its desperate moments when, soaked through and starving, it attempts to claw its way back on board the small boat. With one passing exception -- a long shot of the tiger making its way through a sea of meerkats that’s a bit off -- the representation of Richard Parker is extraordinarily lifelike.

The leap of faith required for Lee to believe this could be put up onscreen in a credible way was necessarily considerable. His fingerprints are at once invisible and yet all over the film in the tact, intelligence, curiosity and confidence that characterizes the undertaking. At all times, the film, shot byClaudio Miranda and with production design by David Gropman, is ravishing to look at, and the 3D work is discreetly powerful. Mychael Danna composed the emotionally fluent score.

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REVIEW: There's been a lot of fuss recently about The New York Times' review of Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant, Guy's American Bar and Grill. Some felt that a snooty reviewer had tried to hold a casual eatery up to standards of four-star dining places, and that Fieri's restaurant would have fared better if it was critiqued for what it was, not for what it could never be.

Summit Entertainment

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson wrap up the "Twilight" saga in "Breaking Dawn Part 2."

Use those standards, then, when judging "Breaking Dawn Part 2," the fifth and final movie in the "Twilight" series. This movie will never be "Citizen Kane," or even "Bridesmaids." It doesn't matter. Those who loved the books and regularly daydream additional adventures for Bella and clan will not expect Oscar-winning dialogue and acting. 

That doesn't mean that the studio has an excuse to lazily throw up a few hand puppets against postcard backgrounds. It just means there's only so much you can do with a story whose source material includes a spine-cracking birth scene, blood being guzzled through straws and vampire baseball.

It's fairly easy to say that almost everyone who was looking forward to seeing "Breaking Dawn Part 2" will enjoy themselves, as the film wraps up the series in a satisfying way, and a neat twist to the credits sequence pays tribute to the characters from all the previous movies. And yes, things don't exactly pan out as they did in the "Breaking Dawn" book, so even fans who've memorized that tome may find some surprises. There's also a brief sneak peek into the characters' future that brought gasps from some of the fans in my screening.

Kristen Stewart as Bella is breathtakingly beautiful as a vampire, with eyes changing from blood red to a hauntingly deep brown, and luxurious locks that a shampoo model would envy. She's not really required to act too much here -- sometimes she just looks like she smelled something bad in the room, and when she attacks someone she thinks is threatening her child, it's with the same attitude Elaine on "Seinfeld" used when telling someone to "Get out!"

The lines, oh, the lines. "We're the same temperature now," Robert Pattinson's Edward says wonderingly to Bella. "It's your turn not to break me," he warns her after noting her new vamp strength. (That might have been about the time a tween behind me sighed, "God, he's GORGEOUS!")

The vampire's super-speed running is still hilarious, as believable as that of Steve Austin in "The Six Million Dollar Man" back in 1975, but thankfully the CGI wolves aren't talking this time around. (There's a really cringeworthy sequence where one of them is ridden like a horse.)

Thank the vampire and werewolf gods for Taylor Lautner, though. He not only takes off his shirt to display those washboard abs, he strips down completely (in a PG-13 way) in one scene. And his Jacob also gets many of the best lines, pointing out some of the most ludicrous plot points with wry humor. When a character wonders if Bella can transform into a wolf too, he snorts, "She wishes she was that awesome."

Summit Entertainment

Vampires from around the globe gather in Forks, Wash. to help out the Cullen coven.

The plot involves the Cullen coven gathering vampire pals from around the planet to help them convince the ruling Volturi to leave Bella and Edward's half-human daughter, Renesmee, alone. This leads to a gathering of supermodel-gorgeous young people (no one old or fat ever gets to be a vampire, apparently) in stiletto heels and some national-stereotype costumes.

And then there's a fight. Hands are cut off. Heads roll. Or do they? You kind of have to see it for yourself. There was a 4-year-old girl at my screening, and during several blood-splattering scenes, I wondered what she was thinking.

But if you're not 4, and the "Twilight" books are your guilty or not-so-guilty pleasure, gather your coven and head out for the wild, weird finale that puts a blood-red bow on the blockbuster series. 

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REVIEW: Don't expect Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" to shake the screen with the action of "Jurassic Park" or "Saving Private Ryan." But that doesn't matter. The biopic is an engrossing look at what exactly our beloved sixteenth president had to do to get enough votes in the House of Representatives to abolish slavery.

It sounds like a tough sell for a Spielberg film. Marvel -- as congressmen are bribed with promises of jobs! Gasp  -- as they quietly mull their options! Thrill -- as a politician debates about crossing party lines! But this is Spielberg we're talking about, and the gifted Daniel Day-Lewis as Honest Abe, and the entire package is so well-wrapped that two and a half hours of politicking fly by.

You can't help but think Day-Lewis will be a major contender for a best actor Oscar. It's easy to convince yourself that the real Lincoln was quite a bit like he's portrayed here. Day-Lewis carries a sad gravity with him -- he's not only trying to steer the country through a war that split it in two, he's still grieving the loss of son Willie three years prior. But he's still a gentle genius who spins out stories that manage to both entertain and educate his audience at the same time. If Lincoln wasn't like that in real life, he surely is in the enshrined images we hold of him.

While Day-Lewis sinks into his character and is almost unrecognizable, Sally Field as his wife Mary Todd Lincoln remains undeniably Sally Field. Her voice and look are distinctive as ever, but she does help you understand the much-maligned first lady, who was all but broken by her son's death. (A line she delivers saying she knows history will judge her for that felt a bit too 2012, but this is Spielberg after all.)

Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, James Spader and Hal Holbrook also have memorable roles, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's turn as son Robert Todd Lincoln is brief if bright.

 "Lincoln" will likely live on long after it leaves theaters -- it deserves to be shown to American history classes for years to come. If political schmoozing and backroom debating was really this interesting in the 1860s, it's a shame there wasn't some primitive version of C-SPAN in those tobacco-spattered, smoke-filled Capitol backrooms.

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REVIEW: The movie James Bond is now 50 years old and wearing his years very well in "Skyfall." The most significant reset of the 23-film series that's unconnected to a change of the actor playing 007, this long-awaited third outing for Daniel Craig feels more seriously connected to real-world concerns than any previous entry, despite the usual outlandish action scenes, glittering settings and larger-than-life characters.

Dramatically gripping while still brandishing a droll undercurrent of humor, this beautifully made film certainly will be embraced as one of the best Bonds by loyal fans worldwide and leaves you wanting the next one to turn up sooner than four years from now.

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Bond watchers have been especially eager for "Skyfall" to arrive for several reasons, particularly to see if the Craig sequence of films can bounce back from the crushing low of "Quantum of Solace" after starting so high with "Casino Royale" and to evaluate what fresh perspective might be delivered by such big and unexpected talents as director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins.

The answers are “yes” to the first proposition and “quite a bit” to the second.

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Whereas "Casino Royale" tasted like a fine old vintage served in a snappy new bottle, "Skyfall" seems like a fresh blend altogether, one with some weight and complexity to it. Much of this, to be sure, stems from Mendes, who, with series veteran writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade along with John Logan, yanks Bond, M and MI6 out of the world of colorful megalomaniacal villains and into the vexing world of shadowy terrorists and cyber warfare.

In the process, they also give Bond not only a few aches and pains, but a sense of mortality, exemplified by a credits sequence festooned not by silhouetted naked women but by images of the secret agent's tombstone and of his being sucked to his doom underwater. Since it happens in the 10-minute action opener, it's giving nothing away to say that -- after an elaborate and logistically outrageous chase through the streets and bazaars and over the roofs of Istanbul, and then on top of a train into the countryside -- M is seen writing her veteran agent's obituary.

He has survived, of course, but his brush with death has been so close that Bond goes Jason Bourne for a while, holing up anonymously on a tropical beach with a babe and drinking himself to oblivion. But when the modern new London headquarters building of MI6 explodes in a terrorist attack, Bond reports back for duty to a boss who herself is being none too gently being shown the door by intelligence and security committee chairman Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes).

In fact, all British agents embedded within terrorist organizations have been compromised and are beginning to be killed, making M look incompetent and Bond seem a bit of a dinosaur whose wits and brawn are no match for high-tech warriors.

“So this is it, we're both played out,” he says to her -- prematurely, as it turns out, though Bond still is put through some arduous tests to re-earn his old job back. Bond never has endured so many rude remarks about his physical prowess since Sean Connery made his middle-aged one-shot return to the role in the ill-advised "Never Say Never Again." For her part, M plays a more central role here than she has before, and Judi Dench, as usual, makes the most of the opportunity, investing her authority role with great dignity undercut with a sliver of insecurity.

The globetrotting continues to Shanghai, where the striking high-rises make a terrific nocturnal backdrop to Bond's stealthy pursuit of the assassin/hard-drive thief he narrowly missed in Istanbul. From there it's on to Macau, where the old Bond re-emerges in a tuxedo to drink his martini (very smartly shaken, not stirred, by a deft lady bartender) in a casino where he gets hot and heavy with the striking yet nervously neurotic Severine, who is given a distinctive preoccupied edge by Berenice Lim Marlohe. Trailing along behind to keep an eye on things and trade dry banter (and perhaps more than that) is field agent Eve, very engagingly played by Naomie Harris.

It is Severine who can take Bond to the man who's causing all the trouble. In a scene of surpassing beauty and weirdness, by yacht the two approach a strange island city, from which the entire population has just fled. It has just been taken over by a strange tall man with dyed blond hair, insinuating humor and heavily armed henchmen. At the 70-minute mark, Javier Bardem makes his fabulously staged entrance as Silva, who, like many Bond villains of the past, is half persuasive and half lunatic, has delusions of exceptional grandeur and is partial to explaining many things to his captive before he means to kill him. He also has a theatrically sexual side that brings something new to the gallery of Bond villains. In all events, Bardem makes him a riveting and most entertaining figure.

Even if Bond is able to turn the tables on Silva and bring him back to London as a prisoner, that's far from the end of it, as Silva is one resourceful chap whose advanced computer skills test the expertise even of the new Q, the MI6 weapons and technology guru now reimagined as a very young man and wonderfully played in full geek drag by Ben Whishaw. The scene in which he and Bond meet for the first time in an art gallery is an instant mini-classic.

Ultimately, there is a very conscious, even articulated effort to balance the old and new, the traditional and the modern in "Skyfall" -- stylistically, dramatically and thematically. Longtime series producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli never have gone so far as to hire a full control-demanding auteur to direct one of their films, and while Mendes certainly is the most distinguished outside director they've ever brought aboard, he's one as tradition-minded as he is innovative.

Many of the dramatic scenes would do justice to a nongenre film, and the same can be said of the quality of the acting. The traditional quips surface at times in low-key form; some of them are quite good, and they're never corny. The action, much of it presumably staged by veteran second unit director Alexander Witt, is consistently strong (even if a motorcycle-and-jeep chase through the jammed streets of Istanbul reminds, as did a recent one through Manila in "The Bourne Legacy," that motorized chases through thick urban crowds are never entirely convincing).

Tonally, the fundamental seriousness of the film places "Skyfall" at the other end of the Bond spectrum from the monkeyshines of some of the silliest Roger Moore entries, such as "Moonraker" and "A View to A Kill."

The long climax, set at an isolated old house in Scotland presided over by a thickly bearded Albert Finney, plays out partly like a highly elaborated version of "Straw Dogs," albeit with far heavier artillery. The moving and highly satisfying ending nicely tees up the ball for the next round.

Deakins' cinematography is dense, colorful and impactful, noticeably a notch or two above the series’ norm. Production values are similarly at the high end of things, and Thomas Newman's score is far from generic, finding many moods while delightfully allowing room for Monty Norman's immortal Bond theme when the moment calls for it.

And, oh yes, there's Daniel Craig. He owns Bond now, and the role is undoubtedly his for as long as he might want it. Perhaps a tad less buff than in "Casino Royale" and certainly more beat up, he entertains the ladies less here than perhaps any Bond ever has. But two other women, his boss and the queen, have first call on his favors, and he repays them for their confidence many times over -- as he does the audience.

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REVIEW: As the fright season begins to give way to the holidays, Disney looks to capitalize right out of the gate Nov. 2 with 3-D animated comedy "Wreck-It Ralph." An homage to classic video-game culture wrapped in an adventurous road movie, "Ralph" is poised to sweep the family-friendly demo in the first few weeks of the month before any significant challengers emerge.

Guided by executive producer John Lasseter, Walt Disney Animation Studios has clearly devoted significant resources and talent to "Wreck-It Ralph,"  recruiting a top-notch cast and a diverse array of animation, visual effects and lighting artists to contribute to the distinct and varied vid-game styles. With a mix of retro eye-candy for grown-ups and a thrilling, approachable storyline for the tykes, the film casts a wide and beguiling net.

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Emulating a lo-res '80s video game, "Wreck-It Ralph" envisions the titular character as the short-tempered, sledgehammer-fisted, 600-pound bad guy competing against goody-good nemesis Felix in a game located in Mr. Litwak’s (Ed O’Neill) video arcade that’s known as “Fix-It Felix Jr.” As Ralph (John C. Reilly) tells some fellow evildoers at his first “Bad-Anon” meeting, he’s a reluctant villain, tired of always being the culprit who tears down the apartment building inhabited by the Nicelanders who worship Felix (Jack McBrayer) for his superior repair skills.

After 30 years of taking the blame, Ralph’s ready for a change -- he thinks maybe if he can earn a medal, the Nicelanders might give him some respect and invite them to one of their frequent cocktail parties. Traveling through the arcade’s power cords and surge protectors, Ralph journeys to Game Central Station, the gateway to every game in the store. Hearing that first-person shooter challenge “Hero’s Duty” awards a medal for bravery, Ralph suits up to join no-nonsense Sergeant Calhoun’s (Jane Lynch) platoon to battle the Cy-Bugs, a nasty computer virus in the form of cyber spiders.  

Escaping hi-def “Hero’s Duty” with the coveted service medal, Ralph crash-lands one of Calhoun’s spaceships into “Sugar Rush,” a Candy Land-styled race-car game, after he’s attacked onboard by a massive Cy-Bug. He quickly loses his citation to pint-sized Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), a little girl determined to compete in one of Sugar Rush’s prestigious races. Her bratty attitude and refusal to return the medal, which she can use to stake her spot in an upcoming competition, enrage Ralph, but he’s powerless to force the girl to do his bidding.

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Following an unpleasant encounter with Sugar Rush dictator King Candy (Alan Tudyk), Ralph allies himself with Vanellope in a plan to recover his medal and help the kid win a spot in the race. But first they’ll have to in break into the King’s specialized factory and build a competitive race car --  and it might be a good idea for Vanellope to actually learn to drive it. Meanwhile, Felix has abandoned the Wreck-It Ralph game and the Nicelanders, joining up with Calhoun on a quest to retrieve his friend and protect Sugar Rush from the Cy-Bugs before the game gets flatlined.

Although the script is an original by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee, with its tortured toy characters facing obsolescence and searching for freedom and meaning, it bears a distinct Pixar DNA signature. Johnston and Lee don't stray too far from the Disney template, however, and although the characters are digital, their emotions are very recognizably human. Since Ralph and Vanellope are both outcasts, their struggles for acceptance are comfortably similar and familiar.

Making his feature film debut, Emmy-award winning director Rich Moore ("The Simpsons") ably manipulates the action by tantalizingly shifting the characters between game worlds. Effortlessly orchestrating a dizzying variety of visual elements, Moore consistently manages to keep the focus on Ralph and his comrade's multiplying perils. Visually, Pixar’s influence is also evident in the level of detail lavished on the wide range of quirky characters and nearly every setting and background scene. Fortunately the more sugar-coated sentiments are mostly dialed back in favor of genuine character development and rousing, digitally realistic 3-D action.

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The audience’s POV is occasionally represented by a girl who frequents the “real world” of Mr. Litwak’s video arcade, where she interacts with all of the games depicted in the film. Game-play visual elements are used to enhance the impression of actually playing the arcade consoles, which can sometimes get distractingly disorienting as the narrative slips in and out of the video arcade setting.

An enthusiastic cast lends voice to the characters, led by Reilly, capably evincing the role of "Wreck-It Ralph." His sad-sack sentiments, however, are frequently overshadowed by the hyperactive and super-snarky Vanellope. Silverman fully inhabits the character, marvelously calibrating her voice’s volume, insinuating tone and emotional impact to match the character’s antic facial expressions and unpredictable behavior. Tudyk is ridiculously over the top as the punning Mad-Hatter meets Wizard of Oz-like King Candy, while McBrayer and Lynch add surprising dimensionality to the increasingly smitten pair of Felix and Calhoun.

Editor Tim Mertens modulates the sometimes frenetic pace with brief interludes of introspection and camaraderie that help fill in the characters. Henry Jackman's lively score is supplemented by musical selections from R&B star Rihanna, electronica artist Skrillex and classic Kool & the Gang, among others.

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REVIEW: Not quite soaring into the heavens, but not exactly crash-landing either, "Cloud Atlas" is an impressively mounted, emotionally stilted adaptation of British author David Mitchell’s bestselling novel. Written and directed by the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer, this hugely ambitious, genre-jumping, century-hopping epic is parts "Babel" and "Tree of Life," parts "Blade Runner," "Amistad" and "Amadeus," with added doses of gore, CGI, New Age kitsch, and more prosthetics than a veterans hospital in wartime. One of the priciest independent films ever made (on a purported budget of $100 million), "Cloud Atlas" will rely on its chameleon cast to scale a 3-hour running time and reach the box office heights needed for this massive international co-production.

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Mitchel’s 500-plus page book garnered several literary prizes and a huge following after it was first published in 2004, but many would have said that the novel’s unique structure–where multiple stories in different time periods are told chronologically from past to future and then back again—was impossible to adapt to the big screen.

The Wachowskis (with Lana receiving her first screen credit here) and Tykwer ("Run Lola Run," "The International") figured out they could streamline the narrative by cross-cutting between the different epochs and casting the same actors in a multitude of roles. Although this helps to make the whole pill easier to swallow, it also makes it harder to invest in each narrative, while seeing the actors transformed from old to young, black to white, and occasionally gender-bended from male to female, tends to dilute the overall dramatic tension.

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A brief prologue features an old man, Zachry (Tom Hanks), telling a story around a campfire, and from hereon in the film reveals how each plotline is in fact a tale told—or read or seen in a movie—by the next one (this is also a process used in the book). 

They are, in ascending order: an 1849 Pacific sea voyage where a crooked doctor (Hanks), a novice sailor (Jim Sturgess) and an escaped slave (David Gyasi) cross paths; a saga of dualing composers (Jim Broadbent, Ben Wishaw) set in 1936 Cambridge; a San Francisco-set 70s thriller about a rogue journalist (Halle Berry) taking on a nuclear power chief (Hugh Grant); a 2012-set comedy about a down-on-his-luck London book editor (Broadbent); a sci-fi love story about an indentured wage slave (Doona Bae) and the rebel (Sturgess) who rescues her, set in “Neo Seoul” in 2144; and a 24th century-set tale of tribal warfare, where Zachry teams up with a visiting explorer (Berre) in search of a groundbreaking, planet-shaking discovery.

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Despite their myriad differences, the half-dozen plot strands are coherently tied together via sharp editing by Alexander Berner (Resident Evil), who focuses on each separate story early on, and then mixes them up in several crescendo-building montages where movement and imagery are matched together across time. As if such links weren’t explicit enough, the characters all share a common birthmark, and have a tendency to repeat the same feel-good proverbs (ex. “By each crime, and every kindness, we build our future”) at various intervals.

Yet while the directorial trio does their best to ensure that things flow together smoothly enough and that their underlying message—basically, no matter what the epoch, we are all of the same soul and must fight for freedom—is heard extremely loud and incredibly clear, there are so many characters and plots tossed about that no one storyline feels altogether satisfying. As history repeats itself and the same master vs. slave scenario keeps reappearing, everything gets homogenized into a blandish whole, the impact of each story softened by the constant need to connect the dots.

Of all the pieces of the puzzle, the ones that feel the most effective are the 70s investigative drama, which has shades of Alan Pakula and Fincher’s "Zodiac," and the futuristic thriller, where the Wachowskis show they can still come up with some nifty set-pieces, even if the production design (by Uli Hanisch and Hugh Bateup) and costumes (by Kym Barrett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud) feel closer to the artsy stylings of Wong Kar Wai’s "2046" than to the leather Lollapalooza that is "The Matrix" trilogy.

Perhaps such choices go hand in hand with a movie that yearns to be both arthouse and blockbuster, yet can’t seem to make up its mind. Thus, the decision to utilize the same actors helps to visually link up the plots, but is so conspicuous that it distracts from the drama. It’s hard to take Berry seriously when she’s been anatomically morphed into a Victorian housewife (she’s much better as the crusading reporter), or to swallow Hanks as a futuristic Polynesian tribesmen with a face tattoo and a funny way of talking (he says things like “Tell me the true true.”)

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Broadbent’s experience in spectacles like "Moulin Rouge!" and "Topsy-Turvy" makes him better equipped for such shape-shifting, and his present day scenario is both the silliest and in some ways, the most touching. But it’s Hugo Weaving who seems to have more fun than anyone, especially when he plays a nasty retirement home supervisor reminiscent of Nurse Ratched from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," and does so by getting into full-out drag. It’s an effect that’s amusingly disarming—not to mention evocative of Lana Wachowski’s recent backstory—in a film that aims for the clouds but is often weighed down by its own lofty intentions.

Paramount Pictures

"Paranormal Activity 4."

REVIEW: Mockumentary filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman ("Catfish") know a thing or two about misdirecting an audience, as they proved again with 2011’s "Paranormal Activity 3." Together with returning screenwriter Christopher Landon, this time around they seem short on new ideas, however, relying more on the series’ reputation for low-budget thrills to attract audiences. Regardless, by now Paramount’s franchise is a brand unto itself, and it’s unlikely that anything will stop the first few waves of fans boosting "Paranormal Activity 4" up the chart until at least through Halloween.

Quickly recapping with flashbacks and documentary-style introductory cards the conclusion of "Paranormal Activity 2," when in a prequel to 2007’s original film Katie (Katie Featherston) killed her sister Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and abducted her nephew Hunter (William Juan Prieto), the current version jumps ahead to 2011, relocating the action from California to Nevada and introducing an entirely new family. Teenager Alex (Kathryn Newton), her 6-year-old brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) and their parents (Stephen Dunham and Alexondra Lee) live a typical middle-class suburban life, even if they think their neighbors across the street -- single mother Katie and her young son Robbie (Brady Allen) -- are a bit of an odd pair.

After Katie is unexpectedly and mysteriously admitted to the hospital for some unknown illness, Alex’s mom inexplicably offers to take Robbie in while his mother is recovering. Alex soon begins to notice strange events coincident with Robbie’s arrival, while the young visitor’s insinuations increasingly draw Wyatt away from her. Other family members also begin to clue into the strange goings-on, with mysterious sounds, shifting furniture and alarmingly animated household objects suggesting something is seriously amiss.

With the help of her boyfriend Ben (Matt Shively), Alex sets up the family’s home video cameras and laptops to record Robbie’s late-night wanderings and vaguely sinister activities around the house. As Alex becomes more convinced that some evil presence is seeking her out, the mysterious forces behind Robbie’s visit become more assertive, squarely threatening the family’s survival while inexorably tracking back to the earlier abduction of Hunter.

By now the basis of the "Paranormal Activity" franchise, concerning Katie’s possession by a demonic force that results in a series of malevolently haunted houses, is well-known to those who care to follow each new iteration. The fourth installment adds very little new information while playing out the inevitably unpleasant outcomes that await the characters, preferring to recycle plot elements from previous films.

Fairly mild in tone and riffing -- if not quite ripping -- off a collection of horror classics that includes "The Shining," "Rosemary’s Baby" and "Poltergeist," both the franchise’s premise and its execution nevertheless remain rudimentary, with the narrative and character backstories representing more of a sketch than a fully realized vision of the supernatural world that Katie inhabits.

Although Newton and Shively are likable enough in their roles as the sleuthing teens, the other performances remain perfunctory overall. Laptop webcams and camera phones are substituted for the earlier video-surveillance cams, but little has changed visually in the style of the filmmakers’ alternation of static and frantic handheld shots, mixed with a surfeit of distracting closeups.

Asymmetrically framed scenes, staccato editing techniques and oppressive ambient sound (and the ominous lack of a score) are substituted for any real narrative development, leaving a plot essentially consisting of a series of setups followed by frightening payoffs. Weak attempts to introduce a smattering of satanic symbology are belatedly superfluous. It’s just such lack of creative investment that inevitably leads to further sequels, if a theatrical audience can actually be sustained going forward.

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Summit Entertainment

Tyler Perry as "Alex Cross."

REVIEW: You almost feel sorry for Tyler Perry, stepping out of his own universe for the first time to try to expand his range and finding himself in something as thoroughly dismal as Alex Cross. An unpleasant film from the sadistic behavior of its loathsome villain to the grubbiness of its visual palette, this stands as a substandard attempt to bring novelist James Patterson's intuitive cop back to the big screen. All the same, it will be interesting to observe if much of Perry's generally loyal audience turns out to see him in a major change of pace, as well as if non-fans are curious to check him as a potential action hero. Whatever the opening is, legs are doubtful.

Among other things, Alex Cross features a mano-a-mano climax that is a strong contender for the title of worst major fight scene ever to grace a major motion picture. The lighting is dark, it's framed so tightly you can't tell who's hitting whom or what's going on, and the camera's intense jitters make it a virtual parody of filmmakers trying to make something exciting by shaking the camera. It's incredible one of the six producers didn't notice this and demand a retake.

Not directly based on any single one of Patterson's novels about the brilliant investigator and forensic psychologist but credited nonetheless as an adaptation of "Cross," the script by Mark Moss and Kerry Williamson takes the man back to his pre-Washington and FBI days, when he was a cop on the Detroit police force (though some might notice that, for financial reasons, the film was shot largely in Cleveland). This repositioning suits the fact that Perry is about 20 years younger than Morgan Freeman was when he played the role in "Kiss the Girls" in 1997 and "Along Came a Spider" four years later.

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This is a nasty psycho-killer film plain and simple, centered on a wily and well-armed sicko who flat-out announces that, “Inflicting pain is a crucial part of my true calling.” In order to look more cadaverously sinister, Matthew Fox (Lost) might have shed more weight for a role than anyone since Christian Bale went skeletal for "The Machinist."  As is exhibited all too vividly at the outset, Picasso -- as he quickly becomes known for good reasons -- loves to torture, to feel his victims' pain, you might say, and it's up to Cross and his boyhood friend and partner Tommy Kane (Edward Burns) to track the maniac down.

Unfortunately, there's no preparation for the way Cross lays out how the first mass murder went down almost as soon as he arrives on the crime scene, apparently so accurately that his visions of what Picasso wrought are simultaneously presented as fact. He would seem to have an unnatural gift for sussing out a bad guy's M.O., but we never learn anything about this ability, other than that the FBI has noticed it and is paging him to D.C. The idea of moving doesn't sit too well with Cross' wife (Carmen Ejogo), who announces she's pregnant with their third child. But domestic decisions will have to wait until the maniac is brought down.

On precious little evidence, Cross thinks he has Picasso's intentions figured out -- he seems to be targeting the extravagantly rich -- but he and Tommy soon find the victims are too close to home. Picasso torments Cross with taunting phone calls and always seems a step or two ahead of his pursuer, for whom the hunt becomes a personal obsession.

Director Rob Cohen takes no time to set up scenes properly to build suspense or, as in the case of the climax and another action interlude involving a car crash, to even make them plausible. The camera shakes big time in another sequence when a major lead is discovered that might lead to the killer, and a coda set in Bali is preposterous in the way one of the characters spews out information he has no need to disclose.

Towering over the other actors (he's 6-foot-5), Perry lumbers around with a degree of charisma but a lack of emotional range or variety in line delivery. Although watchable and certainly different from the usual run of leading men, he's not really all that interesting in this character. Fox is plenty convincing as the cretin without the merest morsel of humanity, while the other actors just cash their paychecks, notably Jean Reno as a French industrialist with an unexplained penchant for turning the city of Detroit around.

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Warner Bros. Pictures

Bryan Cranston and Ben Affleck in "Argo."

REVIEW: "Argo" is a crackerjack political thriller told with intelligence, great period detail and a surprising amount of nutty humor for a serious look at the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-81. Proving even more than before that he’s a behind-the-camera force to be reckoned with, Ben Affleck tells a dense, multilayered yarn “based on a declassified true story” with confidence and finesse, while its unlikely Hollywood angle will make the hometown industry crowd feel proud of itself. From all points of view, this is one the major releases of the fall season.

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The current perilous state of U.S.-Iranian relations can only heighten the interest and relevance of this fascinating sideshow to the main event, as a reminder of a dire turning point in modern history for those old enough to remember it and as a pertinent history lesson for people under 35. The truth about the “best bad idea” the CIA could concoct to rescue six U.S. embassy workers who had escaped the compound was unknown until 1997 and even then did not receive enormous publicity.

A stylishly succinct prologue made up of cartoons and documentary footage lays out in simple terms what led up to the departure of the Western-supported Shah and the advent of the Ayatollah Khomeini and fundamentalist Islam in Iran in 1979. Visceral scenes convey the desperation of American embassy workers to burn or shred sensitive documents before the raging mobs break through the gates and invade the premises, where they quickly take 52 hostages.

But more than two months later, the Iranians still don’t realize that six Americans managed to slip out and take refuge in the still-operating Canadian embassy. With his CIA colleagues at a loss to figure out how to sneak the six out of Iran, bearded, longish-haired agent Tony Mendez (Affleck), who has already extricated some of the Shah’s cronies out of the country, happens to catch a bit of "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" on TV and hatches a scheme both bird-brained and brilliant: He’ll approach the series’ prosthetics expert (real-life Oscar-winning makeup artist John Chambers, wonderfully played by John Goodman) to help set up a phony science fiction project with sufficient plausible reality that he might be able to get the six out of Iran posing as Canadian production personnel who’d been on a location scout.

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Thus follows a most amusing Hollywood interlude for which the cynical remarks of a veteran producer with some time on his hands, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin at his deadpan best), set the absurdly funny tone. Lester insists that the picture must appear to have a degree of legitimacy to it, so an existing Star Wars-type rip-off script called "Argo" is purchased, a reading is held at the Beverly Hilton with costumed actors, and ads are prepared.

So while Lester cracks that, “We had suicide missions in the Army that had better odds than this,” the CIA, fronted here by Mendez’s boss Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston), surprisingly approves what it calls “the Hollywood Option.” The necessary doctored passports in hand, Mendez heads for the Canadian embassy in Tehran, where he meets six fellow Americans who are scared stiff.

The final act of the highly skilled screenplay by Chris Terrio, whose other principal credit is for directing the little-seen 2005 film Heights, ramps things up from cold-sweat tension to seconds-ticking suspense in traditional movie-movie fashion, even down to a pretty implausible but undeniably exciting climactic chase. It would be a major surprise indeed to learn that things actually went down just as they are shown to have done here. But if you want a strictly factual account, you’d probably rather be watching a documentary, which Argo decidedly is not.

Still, the film goes to great lengths to achieve an authentic feel and an outstanding sense of period. Turkey ably stands in for Iran in crucial exteriors; the many phones, communication and copying machines are right; and the fashions -- from the tacky casual wear sported by most characters to the outsized glasses frames -- are spot-on in their infinite hideousness. The old Warners logo from the period is used upfront, and the studio’s famous water tower has even been relabeled to duplicate its look at the time. Rodrigo Prieto’s superior cinematography affects a deliberately grubby look entirely in keeping with locations and desired feel of sweaty squalor.

Evocative use is made of TV news clips, from Mike Wallace’s in-person interview with Khomeini to glimpses of the very young-looking Ted Koppel and Tom Brokaw. Small details are telling, such as how an Iranian passport official crosses out “Kingdom of Iran” on a form and scrawls in “Republic” instead, and how a British Airways flight attendant announces the end of alcoholic beverage service once the plane enters Iranian airspace.

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Although the dramatic conclusion comes as no real surprise and represents the merest drop of cheer in a sea of unpleasantness between the United States and Iran over the past 33 years, it nonetheless delivers a strong charge of honest emotion, especially surprising for what in format is a genre film. The final explanations of how the real story of the mission was finally revealed includes a voice-over by Jimmy Carter, who was president when it all took place.

Except for the showier turns by Arkin and Goodman, the performances are credibly utilitarian, led by Affleck as a smart agent who has learned not to tip his hand through outward displays. Cranston as Mendez’s boss and Victor Garber as the stalwart Canadian ambassador are similarly solid and unostentatious.

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REVIEW: A true-crime author stumbles onto something beyond his beat in Scott Derrickson's "Sinister," which follows Ethan Hawke's Ellison Oswalt as he grows increasingly obsessed with a missing-girl case he hopes will lead to a bestselling book. Occasionally stupid (stretching even fright-flick conventions) but scary nonetheless, the pic should please horror fans.

Summit Entertainment

Ethan Hawke in "Sinister."

When Oswalt's wife (Juliet Rylance), just uprooted to a new town (so he can investigate the new story) and already getting bad vibes from neighbors, asks "We didn't move a few doors down from a crime scene again, did we?" he assures her they didn't. She asked the wrong question: Oswalt has bought the very house in which four members of a family were slain, with the fifth abducted. An ornery sheriff (Fred Thompson) stops by before the boxes are even unloaded to warn the author he's not a fan of his books, and doesn't cotton to a fame-hungry scribbler second-guessing his department's work.

CineEurope adds Ethan Hawke horror film "Sinister" to indie lineup

Local lawmen are soon the least of Oswalt's worries. He finds a box of Super-8 films in the attic, each showing a family being murdered in a uniquely grisly way. Believing he's stumbled across his own "In Cold Blood,"  he stays up nights scrutinizing the films and looking for connections between killings whose locations and victims are still unknown.

Derrickson borrows the vibe of Joel Schumacher's "8MM" as Hawke, swigging whiskey and giving the crease between his eyebrows a workout, struggles with the horrible things he's seeing. But the film soon shifts into bump-in-the-night mode, with an unseen visitor leaving clues for Oswalt in his own house and taunting him with increasingly unsettling (and harder to explain) stunts.

Setting aside Oswalt's infuriating unwillingness to turn on the lights when homicidal intruders infiltrate his home at midnight, the movie has him doing some pretty unjustifiably dumb things -- like walking with a butcher knife thrust in front of him when he has every reason to think his sleepwalking young son might suddenly leap out at him.

Ethan Hawke horror film "Sinister" getting sneak screening in Austin

We allow him some of this, thanks to the picture's coy suggestions that Oswalt might be going a little nuts due to the nature of his investigation. But Derrickson and co-screenwriter C. Robert Cargill are eager to draw in more familiar supernatural elements -- an occultologist (Vincent D'Onofrio) identifies a crime-scene marking as a pagan symbol "dating back to Babylonian times" -- and the movie's proceduralist pleasure takes a backseat to ghosts and a mysterious figure known as "Mr. Boogie."

The scares are effective throughout, helped a good deal by Christopher Young's glitchy electronic score. While the end clearly points toward a possible franchise, though, many of the ingredients that make "Sinister" compelling wouldn't make sense a second time around. Some of them barely hold up for the first.

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 REVIEW: After proving to be a problematic fit for the grim post-apocalyptic existentialism of "The Road," director John Hillcoat is back on more fertile turf with "Lawless,"  a muscular slice of grisly Americana rooted in flavorful Prohibition-era outlaw legend. While a touch overlong and not as distinctive as his last collaboration with screenwriter Nick Cave, the Australian Western "The Proposition,"  the new film is more commercially accessible, fueled by a brooding sense of dread, visceral bursts of violence, potent atmosphere and some juicy character portraits from a robust cast.

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The nominal lead figure in the dark ensemble drama is Jack Bondurant, probably the most standard role but one that yields more accomplished work than pretty much anything Shia LaBoeuf has done to date. However, it’s the characters around Jack that supply much of the texture, notably his brothers, the taciturn, philosophizing Forrest (Tom Hardy) and hooch-swilling punisher Howard (Jason Clarke). No less vital contributions come from Guy Pearce as a corrupt, dandified lawman, who has no qualms about spilling blood so long as it doesn’t splash his bespoke suits, and Gary Oldman in a brief but lip-smacking turn as Chicago mobster Floyd Banner.

 Adding welcome softer notes are gifted up-and-comer Dane DeHaan as Cricket, a crippled kid whose magic touch produces superior moonshine; Mia Wasikowska as Bertha, a strict preacher’s daughter with a rebellious streak; and Jessica Chastain as Maggie, an emotionally bruised burlesque dancer looking for a quiet life away from the mean city and stumbling instead on a whole other kettle of brutality in the backwoods.

Inspired by "The Wettest County in the World," Matt Bondurant’s 2008 fictionalized account of his bootlegging ancestors’ exploits in 1930s Franklin, Va., the story puts Cave right smack in his element. An artist who has always been drawn to the romance of bloodshed, crime and death, the goth troubadour might just as easily have plucked this tale from his brilliant 1996 album of distilled narratives, "Murder Ballads."

A prologue accompanied by copious voiceover from Jack dips into the self-styled legend of the Bondurant boys. They are believed to be indestructible, particularly Forrest, who survived the flu that killed their parents. As a lad, Jack is revealed to be the runt of the litter. His failure to comply with his tough siblings’ order to put a bullet in a hog unnecessarily telegraphs the task he is destined to fulfill in the final bloodbath. But Hillcoat and Cave seem happy to lift from the classics playbook.

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The main action begins in 1931. The now-grown Bondurant brothers run a thriving bootlegging operation in the mountains, one of many outfits supplying quality hooch to the county -- whites, blacks, civilians and lawmen alike. But up north in gangster-land, a crime wave is sweeping the nation, its tentacles inevitably reaching Virginia.

Wanting a slice of the moonshine profits, the crooked commonwealth attorney dispatches Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Pearce), a vicious, perfumed snake who makes no effort to hide his disdain for these hicks. But Forrest makes it clear the Bondurants won’t lie down for anybody, delivering his message with a persuasive combination of knuckleduster and contempt. That sets up him and Rakes as instant nemeses. Forrest also resists overtures from other local bootleggers to comply with the new “law,” insisting on staying solo. That stance combined with Cricket’s high-grade brew helps the brothers prosper.

Running parallel to the encroaching friction with Rakes is the more prosaic strand of Jack’s efforts to earn his big brothers’ respect and become a legitimate player in their operation. His opportunity comes while Forrest is laid up with a fresh Frankenstein scar across his throat from where Rakes’ goons sliced him open. Jack gets a lucky break in a near-fatal encounter with Floyd Banner’s men, among them a nasty stooge played by Noah Taylor. Jack’s cut of the deal allows him to purchase a snazzy auto and sharp threads to help him court the pious and pretty Bertha. Meanwhile, lovely Maggie works the bar at the boys’ Blackwater Station, as she and Forrest shoot each other smoldering glances.

Aided by fluid work from editor Dylan Tichenor, Hillcoat punches the action along at an unhurried yet steady pace, expertly sustaining tension and a mood of impending menace. The inevitable showdown, after Jack’s carelessness leads Rakes to their secret distillery location, is a little too protracted, and the coda 10 years on lingers unduly. But the film maintains its suspense and compelling character engagement throughout.

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Without exactly glorifying their outlaw heroes, Hillcoat and Cave definitely keep us in their corner, showing even their most violent actions to be driven by self-protection or payback, never merely by malice. The most memorable of them is somber Forrest, whose dialogue is delivered from somewhere way back in Hardy’s throat, often as barely more than an inarticulate rumble. But from in amongst those animal growls spout occasional pearls of outlaw wisdom, such as “It is not the violence that sets a man apart, it’s the distance he is prepared to go.”

Benoit Delhomme’s widescreen visuals have a handsome epic sweep. The earthy sepia tones and shadowy interiors are shuffled with crisp skies and green forestland covered with vines and tangled willows. The evocative feel for time and place is furthered by Chris Kennedy’s rustic period production design and Margot Wilson’s sharp costumes.

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As in "The Proposition," Cave’s contribution extends to an indispensable score, co-written with Warren Ellis. (The team also provided music for Andrew Dominik’s "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," a film that some will no doubt say the less nuanced "Lawless" aspires to be.) Their score here mixes rootsy bluegrass, gospel, country and contemporary songs reinterpreted by Emmylou Harris and Ralph Stanley, among others.

If "Lawless" doesn’t achieve the mythic dimensions of the truly great outlaw and gangster movies, it is a highly entertaining tale set in a vivid milieu, told with style and populated by a terrific ensemble. For those of us who are suckers for blood-soaked American crime sagas from that era, those merits will be plenty.

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Diyah Pera / Lionsgate

"Possession" is reportedly based on a true story about a spooky box that terrified its many owners.

REVIEW: We’ve had zombies, demons, vampires and ghosts. Why shouldn’t a dybbuk -- the Judaic version of the possessing spirit -- have a chance to finally shine again on the big screen? Representing a sort of equal opportunity religious variation on an all-too-familiar theme, "The Possession" is a Jewish-themed "Exorcist" that, if nothing else, should discourage the practice of buying antique wooden boxes at flea markets.

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Such a box, carved with Hebrew inscriptions, causes no end of havoc in this low-rent horror film receiving a typical dog days, end of summer release. It comes into the possession of the Brenek family, or rather the splintered Brenek family, since father Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has been separated from his ex-wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) for a year, causing predictable emotional difficulties for young daughters Hannah (Madison Davenport) and 10-year-old Em (Natasha Calis).

Em persuades her dad to buy her the ominous looking box, unaware that its previous owner, an elderly woman, has wound up immobilized in bed after being handled rather violently by the dybbuk inside it.

Said dybbuk soon finds a new host in the innocent young girl who, like Linda Blair’s Regan, starts displaying violent, anti-social behavior. But while at first her symptoms prove hardly distinguishable from those of a typical troubled adolescent, an invasion of giant moths in her bedroom prove the need for drastic measures, or at least a good exterminator.

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After a quick consultation with a professor, Clyde heads to Borough Park, Brooklyn, here depicted as so awash in Hasidim that it resembles a 19th century Polish shtetl. There he enlists the aid of a rabbi’s son, Tzadok (played, in a canny bit of casting, by the Hasidic hip-hop/reggae star Matisyahu).

After a medical procedure that reveals that dybukks are visible on MRIs, they get down to the inevitable business of a Jewish exorcism, performed in perhaps the most poorly securitized, empty hospital in North America.

Director Ole Bornedal ("Nightwatch") indulges in the usual cheap scares induced by ear-shattering bursts of volume, frequently punctuating scenes with blackouts and ominous piano chords. But despite young thespian Calis’ impressive ability for malevolent staring, her character is never all that frightening, with her possession often signaled by dark eye shadow that makes her look mainly like a young goth chick.

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The adult performers go through their properly anguished paces with professionalism, with Morgan displaying his usual relaxed charisma and Sedgwick displaying even more levels of anger than she did as the hard-boiled deputy police chief in "The Closer." But Matisyahu, while a likeable screen presence, seems to have been cast less for the quality of his acting than for his copious facial hair.

Much is made of the fact that the film is “based on a true story,” with the press notes even including an excerpt from the original ad on Ebay attempting to sell the infamous box. But there surely must be easier ways to drum up the price.

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