TGIF: Movie capsule review for the week starting Oct. 25

‘BAGGAGE CLAIM’ – Would it be an unforgivable pun to call ‘Baggage Claim’ a mixed bag? This breezy, cheesy, wildly uneven romantic comedy, directed by David E. Talbert and adapted from his novel, stars the gorgeous Paula Patton as Montana, a flight attendant who’s staring at the big 3-0 and is desperate to get married. And from that offensive premise, ‘Baggage Claim’ only gets more retro: In her ridiculously strenuous efforts to get a ring on it, she puts herself through all manner of pain, humiliation and illegality in order to accidentally-on-purpose bump into a series of ex-boyfriends as they take holiday flights between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (The illegality comes in when Montana’s besties, played by Adam Brody and Jill Scott, access the unwitting gentlemen’s flight information, the better for Montana to ambush them while looking her best.) There’s so much wrong with ‘Baggage Claim’ – from its outdated story line and similarities to the dreadful ‘What’s Your Number’ to Talbert’s clumsy, flat-screen directing – that it’s all the more surprising when things go right. But it would be unfair to deny that it doesn’t provide its own modest, sometimes outright hilarious, pleasures. Patton, who starred in the rom-com ‘Jumping the Broom’ a few years ago, here adopts an annoyingly wispy, little-girl persona. But she’s sensational to look at, as are the scrumptious actors who play her line of leading men, an ensemble that includes no less than Taye Diggs, Djimon Hounsou, Boris Kodjoe and Derek Luke, who delivers an appealingly low-key performance as Montana’s childhood friend and current neighbor, William. Anyone with a heartbeat will know where ‘Baggage Claim’ will end up (or, more precisely, with whom). Anyone with a brain won’t believe a word of it. Still, there are some genuinely amusing moments along the way, most of them courtesy of Brody and Scott, who add spicy dollops of naughty humor to the otherwise gratifyingly un-raunchy proceedings. PG-13. 1 hour, 33 minutes. 2 stars ‘CAPTAIN PHILLIPS’ – It’s not easy to make a film out of real-life events and turn it into a gripping thriller – especially when most of your audience knows the ending. Director Paul Greengrass has turned the trick with ‘Captain Phillips,’ a harrowing re-creation of the 2009 hijacking of an American freighter by Somali pirates. With some considerable help from star Tom Hanks as the ship’s captain, Richard Phillips, Greengrass has taken Phillips’ ordeal and made it a vivid tale of an everyman’s battle for survival in the midst of what turned into an international incident. Greengrass doesn’t waste too much time setting the scene. Phillips, a veteran sailor, says goodbye to his wife (a brief appearance by Catherine Keener) before flying to take command of the Maersk Alabama. His job is to sail the freighter from southern Oman to Kenya – right through waters off the coast of Somalia. At the same time, on the beach in the city of Eyl, Somali pirates are getting organized to take to the seas, looking for hijacking targets. As Phillips sails down the coast – it becomes clear very quickly that he has deep concerns about the lack of security on the boat – the pirates set off in skiffs commanded by Muse (a very good Barkhad Abdi). Muse’s crew is hardly a crack military team, but they are good enough to spot and track the Maersk Alabama. Phillips and his men thwart one attack, but Muse and three other pirates eventually board and take over the ship. For his part, Phillips manages to hide most of his crew in the bowels of the massive freighter (a pirate search for men is a tense, beautifully crafted bit of filmmaking). Things unravel quickly for Muse and his pirates. The crew manages to disable the ship, and the U.S. Navy is in pursuit and closing fast. With their hijacking unraveling, the pirates grab Phillips and take off in one of the ship’s high-tech lifeboats for the Somali coast. At least the pirates can still get a handsome ransom for the captain. It all comes down to a climactic showdown at sea involving the lifeboat, multiple Navy ships, attack helicopters and a crack team of SEALs. The ending is so dramatic that it seems like a piece of fiction – except that’s the way things turned out in real life. At the heart of the drama is the battle of wits between Phillips and Muse. The two men, both fundamentally decent souls, parry and thrust as the crisis boils around them. Aside from a very bad Boston accent that comes and goes, Hanks is superb as Phillips, who in a nuanced performance conveys the man’s intelligence and drive to survive. Abdi, a Somali emigre living in America making his film debut, captures Muse’s street smarts and his ambivalence toward the life he has to lead. Working with a sharp script drawn from Phillips’ memoir by Billy Ray (‘Shattered Glass’) and crack cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (‘The Hurt Locker’), Greengrass has treated his source material with respect, shaping an intelligent, spellbinding drama. Few directors are better at re-creating real-life events; he proved that with 2006’s extraordinary ‘United 93,’ the best of all the 9/11 films, and with 2002’s ‘Bloody Sunday,’ set in the worst days of the Irish-British conflict. PG-13. 2 hours, 14 minutes. 3.5 stars ‘CARRIE’ – Awash in blood and tears, a woman howls in unspeakable anguish as she gives birth in the harrowing first moments of the new ‘Carrie’ remake. She is ashen and alone, her face gnarled with fear. Believing the child to be the devil’s spawn, she grabs a pair of scissors to stab the infant to death. Only the baby’s soft mewling, the pureness of its gaze, spares it from the knife. Director Kimberly Peirce summons up the bracing thematic subtext of her stylish remake in that deeply disturbing scene. It’s masterful filmmaking that recalls the visual economy of her debut film, ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ and her gift for psychological nuance. The cringe-inducing opening tableau tells us this is a tale about the cycle of birth and death, the fierce bond between mother and child and the destiny of biology. Far from a mindless monster flick about a kid with supernatural powers, this is a movie that mines the horror of real life, from dysfunctional families to cyberbullies. That the opening scene is by far the most chilling in the movie is both the strength of this remake and its key weakness. Peirce shines such a harsh spotlight on the twisted love between the religious zealot mother, Margaret White (played with heart-pounding menace by Julianne Moore), and the misfit daughter, Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz), that the rest of Carrie’s connections to the world seem like an afterthought. Home is the real horror here. Moore’s captivating performance steals some of the thunder because very little else in the picture can rival it. While Peirce pays homage to Brian De Palma’s 1976 original by echoing many of the iconic film’s seminal moments, she diminishes the bite of the bullying that Carrie endures from her peers. That’s a pity, because it robs this bloody revenge tragedy of its visceral effect. The indignity Carrie suffers at school is nothing compared with the daily torment she experiences in her mother’s religious torture closet. The fear that Margaret engenders in her offspring will give you nightmares, because it feels so much more raw and real than any of the movie’s supernatural butchery. Certainly nothing that happens at the legendary prom, not even the ritual bathing in the bucket of pig’s blood or the epic carnage than ensues, is anywhere near as terrifying as Margaret ramming her own head against the wall in penance.For her part, Moretz (‘Let Me In’) captures the vulnerability of Carrie, a girl battered on all sides but trying desperately, futilely, to fit in. Dressed in mousy homemade clothes, her hair in ungainly braids, she’s an instant pariah in a teen universe ruled by the vapid and the vain. Indeed, one of the most unsettling threads Peirce weaves here is that when fanatical Margaret rants and raves about the corruption of pop culture, you fear she may not be entirely mistaken. For all its cheesy ’70s vibe, De Palma’s movie far better captured the primal, almost ‘Lord of the Flies’ nature of the high school experience, the sheer terror of being a social outcast. That’s what really gave the Carrie myth such staying power in pop culture. At its core, ‘Carrie’ captured something painful and true about adolescence. R. 1 hour, 39 minutes. 2.5 stars ‘CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2’ – Experienced chefs will tell you that changing one or two crucial ingredients in a prize-winning recipe can turn a delectable meal into a flavorless dish you’d hesitate to feed to your pet. A similar switch deflates ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2.’ Original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have departed the ‘Cloudy’ kitchen, and even though their ‘Cloudy’ replacements, Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn, have access to almost all of the components that helped make the first film a critical and commercial success, this noisy sequel delivers about as much pizzazz as reheated leftovers. The sequel picks up eight minutes after the 2009 ‘Cloudy’ concluded. Amateur inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) continues to clean up the delicious mess created by his Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator, a device that turns water into food. His faulty invention catches the eye of Chester V (Will Forte) – Flint’s childhood idol, and the mysterious chief executive of a burgeoning idea factory named Live Corp. Chester offers Flint a dream job at the California company, but his first assignment sounds familiar: He’s ordered to return to his hometown of Swallow Falls and once again disconnect the Food Replicator, which currently is creating hundreds of new, edible species called Foodimals. The first ‘Cloudy’ whipped a tornado of tasty food jokes into a spot-on satire of natural-disaster pictures like ‘Twister’ or ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’ Lord and Miller took the simple concepts of Judi Barrett’s 1978 children’s book and blew them up to epic proportions (and portions), lampooning Hollywood’s overblown, post-apocalyptic film genre in the process. But instead of upping the ante, as so many sequels do, ‘Cloudy 2’ merely gets the band back together – including perky weather girl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), immature bully Brent (Andy Samberg) and Flint’s level-headed father (James Caan) – for a repetitive mission that calls to mind multiple beats from the first movie. PG. 1 hour, 35 minutes. ‘DESPICABLE ME 2’ – It’s far from the perfect animated movie, but, when you weigh its pluses against its minuses, ‘Despicable Me 2’ comes about pretty Gru-vy. Really, how can you not love Gru? Voiced by Steve Carell, the rotund, pointy-nosed fellow was introduced in 2010’s likewise enjoyable ‘Despicable Me’ as a super villain out to steal the moon. However, after finding himself caring for three young orphan girls – oldest Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), youngest Agnes (Elsie Fisher) and Edith (Dana Gaier) – he finds he has a good heart and changes his ways. In the sequel, he, the girls and his adorable Minions – all those little, yellow, mumbling creatures from the first movie – are back. Gru is being recruited by the Anti-Villain League because someone has stolen a dangerous serum that has the potential to turn innocent beings into larger, monstrous versions of themselves. Gru partners with a female AVL agent, Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig), a development that excites the girls, especially Agnes, who desperately yearns for a mother figure. As for the job at hand, Gru begins to suspect a man named Eduardo (Benjamin Bratt), the owner of a Mexican restaurant, of being onetime masked villain El Macho, who years ago was believed to have perished in a volcano. While ideally they would have found a way to give this second chapter of Gru’s story a bit more depth, returning writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio and directors Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin have done a fine job. It’s nice that the franchise wasn’t handed right over to a new brain trust. Likewise, the voice work in ‘Despicable Me 2’ is solid. You know what you’re going to get from Carell – his performance goes so well with Gru’s odd looks – and Wiig and Bratt are good if unremarkable. (Bratt took over the role of Eduardo from Al Pacino, who reportedly left the movie two months before the release over creative differences. It would have been fun to hear the veteran actor ham it up, but oh well.) You’d like to laugh a little more – and maybe even tear up a bit – in ‘Despicable Me 2,’ but you’ll have to settle for the whole family being entertained. Gru-vy indeed. PG. 1 hour, 38 minutes. 2.5 stars ‘THE FIFTH ESTATE’ – As part of an exceptionally strong season of fact-based dramas on screen, ‘The Fifth Estate,’ about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrives with something of a shrug. At its best, the film works as a serious showcase for its capable star, the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who delivers an eerily on-point portrayal of the enigmatic central character. And, as a primer on the early days of WikiLeaks and its crusade for transparency and governmental and corporate accountability, ‘The Fifth Estate’ provides useful reminders to audiences who may have come to equate the organization with Assange’s own overweening ego and strange persona. But as a piece of filmed entertainment, ‘The Fifth Estate’ shows why things like authorial point of view and visual sensibility are so essential in bringing such stories to life. Unlike its most obvious predecessor, ‘The Social Network,’ this film doesn’t have much of either, and the weakness shows. Based on books by former Assange collaborators Daniel Domscheit-Berg, David Leigh and Luke Harding, ‘The Fifth Estate’ focuses on Assange’s relationship with Domscheit-Berg (played in the film by ‘Rush’ co-star Daniel Bruhl), a computer programmer in Germany who meets the snow-haired Australian at a hackers’ conference and quickly warms to his calls for ‘a whole new form of social justice’ by way of using encryption to protect whistleblowers. Domscheit-Berg throws in with Assange, who has created WikiLeaks in the belief that ‘if you give a man a mask, he’ll tell you the truth.’ And for a while, it works: In bracing sequences, ‘The Fifth Estate’ shows Assange and Domscheit-Berg exposing powerful banks, corrupt regimes and fraudulent elections, driven by their righteous, sober-minded belief in freedom of expression and unfettered access to raw information. The dream begins to sour with WikiLeaks’ most high-profile ‘gets,’ the release of footage of U.S. forces killing two Reuters reporters in Iraq and a subsequent leak of sensitive State Department cables. Working with newspapers in Germany, London and the United States, Assange refuses to redact material that might have lead to the death of intelligence assets. Director Bill Condon, working from a script by Josh Singer, tries to hype the story, by way of awkward scenes of State Department officials (Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci), a gratuitous subplot involving Domscheit-Berg’s love life and a visual trope involving an empty office that winds up being clumsy and intrusive just when ‘The Fifth Estate’ should be taut and keenly focused. (For a terrific documentary account of Assange’s career, see Alex Gibney’s ‘We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,’ released earlier this year.) R. 2 hours, 4 minutes. 2 stars ‘GRAVITY’ – The marketing tagline for the 1979 science-fiction classic ‘Alien’ was, ‘In space, no one can hear you scream.’ Well, in ‘Gravity’ – a visually stunning and emotionally arresting drama set above the earth – we hear Sandra Bullock’s medical engineer-turned-astronaut Ryan Stone breathe heavily and at least yell during one of many justifiable moments of panic. Thanks to a terrific performance from Bullock and innovative filming from director Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, you feel you are right there with Ryan. If she floats away or runs out of oxygen, so might you. ‘Gravity’ co-stars George Clooney as Matt Kowalski, the mission commander and a calm, cool and smooth-talking veteran astronaut.Matt and his small team, which traveled into space aboard the Shuttle Explorer, are informed by Mission Control in Houston that debris from the intentional demolition of an obsolete satellite is about to be coming at them at high speeds. The debris comes flying into their area, smashing into metal and killing the other members of the team. This is one of the film’s heart-pounding, incredible filmed sequences, and it also involves Ryan being flung away from the area and in real danger of being sentenced to death in the void of space. As Ryan panics, the much calmer Matt coaxes her into giving him enough information to locate her, and soon the two begin a journey to what they hope will be safety aboard a nearby space station. Trouble is, Ryan is low on oxygen and is burning through it fast with her deep, stress-influenced breaths. She has to take sips, he tells her – ‘wine, not beer.’ Oh, and there just may be more debris on the way. To say any more about the journey that lies ahead for the pair would spoil the fun, if you can call it fun. Maybe we should say spoil the experience.That’s what ‘Gravity’ is – an experience. Cuaron (‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,’ ‘Children of Men’), Lubezki and the rest of the film crew developed a complex system to film the movie, utilizing everything from computer animation to robotics and wires. (Seriously, if you read about it, you may think shooting in space may have been easier.) The results are spectacular – especially in 3-D. Yes, this is one of those movies definitely worth a few extra bucks to see in 3-D. PG-13. 1 hour, 31 minutes. 3.5 stars ‘INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2’ – When we last left the Lamberts, the family whose eldest son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), had been trapped in a comalike state in ‘Insidious,’ the boy had awakened from his supernatural trance thanks to a rescue mission by his intrepid father. Like a paranormal Navy SEAL, Daddy (Patrick Wilson) had metaphorically rappelled, under hypnosis, into the spirit realm, where his son was being held captive by ectoplasmic terrorists. ‘Insidious: Chapter 2’ picks up the story there. Where do you go with a tale that ended so over the top, in a fog-shrouded netherworld called ‘The Further’? Apparently, even further. Although ‘Insidious’ had built up a nice head of suspense for much of the film, its final act was absurdly out of proportion to the delicious sense of dread that had been created by director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell, who, since collaborating on the 2004 ‘Saw,’ have made a name for themselves as horror auteurs. Here, they try to outdo what they did in ‘Insidious,’ piling on plot twists borrowed from a host of other movies that, while in some cases are genuinely creepy, turn ‘Chapter 2’ into a bustling, overly busy mess. Remember ‘Poltergeist’? It’s essentially the model for both ‘Insidious’ films, which presuppose a parallel universe beyond the physical one, inhabited by malevolent entities who can drift in and out of our world, and into whose world we – or at least some of us – can also enter, willingly or not. That 1982 film posited an alternate ‘sphere of consciousness’ that could be entered, quite literally, by spiritual spelunkers tethered to a rope. Similarly, ‘Insidious: Chapter 2’ features a visit to the Further by someone tied to – I kid you not – a piece of string. Stick to Wan’s ‘The Conjuring’ (also starring Wilson) for that. Unfortunately, that exquisitely restrained fright-fest, which is still in theaters, is starting to look more and more like a fluke for the filmmaker, who seems to be running out of ideas, even as he amps up the demand for them. Get ready for even less of them in ‘Insidious: Chapter 3,’ a sequel whose inevitability is ensured by the teaser ending of ‘Chapter 2.’ PG-13. 1 hour, 30 minutes. 1.5 stars ‘LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER’ – This is an ambitious success – a passionate, sweeping epic that intimately reflects the civil rights movement through the eyes of a White House butler and his family. It’s a well-told story and important film. Anchored by a graceful performance by Forest Whitaker, the star-laden production does an admirable and, at times, magnificent job at weaving major historical milestones and political figures into the fabric of well-drawn characters’ lives. A few seams do appear in an otherwise intelligent screenplay by Danny Strong (HBO’s ‘Game Change’). Coincidences occasionally happen too conveniently, dulling the dramatic punch. But that is no deal breaker; there are plenty of emotional scenes that hit hard and true. The acting, including the many cameos, is across-the-board superb. Oscar-winner Whitaker is a standout as Cecil Gaines, a butler who served seven presidents. The main character is a fictionalized version of real-life White House butler Eugene Allen. He was featured in a 2008 Washington Post article by Wil Haygood, which caught the eye of the producer Laura Ziskin; and thus the composite character of Cecil was born. Whitaker is subtle and masterful as the tirelessly hardworking Cecil, whose family undergoes turmoil during different points in history. His wife, Gloria (Oprah Winfrey, proving she’s a dynamite actress who convey a great deal with a single look), feels neglected, drinks too much and finds her attention straying. Cecil’s idealistic son, Louis (the charismatic David Oyelowo), butts heads with his dad, and turns into an activist to by getting involved with Martin Luther King Jr., the Freedom Riders and later the Black Panthers. Meanwhile, younger son, Charlie (Elijah Kelley), watches on the sidelines, and provides support and, at times, the film’s comic relief. Director Daniels starts the film with a sock to the gut, thrusting us onto the cotton fields and showing us how despicably African-Americans were treated. The film is rated PG-13, but Daniels doesn’t skirt the ugliness of the time. Especially powerful is a scene later in the film when Daniels shows the hatred spewed at Louis and other young people who sat in the white section at the Woolworth counter. It’s one of the film’s most blistering moments, with Daniels intercutting the intense scene with one of Cecil setting the table at the White House. Just as he did in ‘Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire’ and ‘The Paperboy,’ Daniels pays enormous attention to period detail. And while a sweeping historical film such as ‘Butler’ marks a departure for him, his strong visual and emotive style comes through, and works well with the material. Daniels also successfully handle the challenging numerous cameos of stars playing presidents – Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, James Marsden as John F. Kennedy, Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan – and their families with expertise and ease. Screenwriter Strong helps by honing in on the roles each commander-in-chief played in civil rights. None of the presidents takes center stage here, and they shouldn’t. This is a dramatized historical account about a family that experienced the civil rights movement, and it arrives at a critical juncture in history. It shakes us up and reminds us of where we’ve been, the gains made, and where we hopefully are headed. PG-13. 2 hours, 12 minutes.