Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga's A STAR IS BORN: It's great -- for about half the running time

It's a good thing that A STAR IS BORN -- the current film is at least the fourth go-round, under the same title, for this much-filmed tale of a younger woman who becomes a star under the tutelage of an older man whose life and career are flailing and failing -- is so energized and fulfilling during its first half.

This probably means that the hordes of fans of its two stars, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga (at right and below), will easily hold on through the movie's much more tiresome and cliché-ridden downer of a second half.

That initial hour or so of this overlong, 135-minute movie moves like a house afire, as director, co-star and co-writer Cooper brings the tale easily into the 21st century, while Ms Gaga proves that her acting chops are nearly as good as her singing.

Cooper and crew toss in everything from a gay BFF (Anthony Ramos, below, right) and a drag club, at which our heroine used to waitress and now sometimes sings, to her dumb-but-loveable dad (Andrew Dice Clay, above, right) and his pals to place us resolutely on her side. Further, the several set pieces that dot the first half are handled with such energy, speed and specifics that they win us over completely and make the character's rather meteoric rise seem pretty believable.

Interestingly, Cooper dispenses with much of the expository dialog and situations that we usually see in films such as this so that things move faster, even as the pace grow more breakneck. What dialog there is may not be crackerjack, but we don't really care since the film is barreling along so quickly and enjoyably.

Granted, someone's rise is generally more lively and fun than someone's fall, but the enormous difference here drains way too much energy out of the film, which grows consistently slower and more ponderous as it reaches its uber-clichéd and tearful conclusion.

Further, Cooper has turned his character into way too much a good guy (his only real fault is that nasty addiction to drugs and alcohol) while making the real villain of the movie the heroine's evil manager (Rafi Gavron) -- who not only tells her to do all the wrong stuff, career-wise, in terms of her "being true to herself," but is also practically single-handedly responsible for her hubby's sad fate. So nasty and over-the-top is this guy that, though clean-shaven, you would not be at all surprised to find him twirling his non-existent mustache.

This switch in time, energy and concern from our heroine to our non-hero reduces Gaga's role to second tier -- which is too bad, since she was the spark in part one. She is given too little to do and not nearly enough decent dialog (it becomes more noticeably so-so in the second half) so that her performance begins to rely more and more on the usual clichés. (That's Sam Elliott, below, right, who plays our drunken hero's off-and-on estranged older brother.)

All this may not matter much to major fans of the two stars. But it did to me. And it may to others out there who recall the earlier iterations of A Star Is Born. While this re-telling is a whole lot better than the 1976 Streisand fiasco, it does not hold a candle to the Cukor/Garland/Mason version from 1954.

A Warner Brothers release running two hours and fifteen minutes, the movie opens nationwide this Friday, October 5. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

Sea-monster time again in Jon Turteltaub's updated shark movie, THE MEG

THE MEG turns out to be an abbreviated version of the Megalodon, a now extinct and maybe 60-foot-long shark species that lived a couple of million years ago. It comes back, of course, from below the Mariana Trench, in the new sea-monster movie named after it and which offers a surprising amount of thrills, chills and good, silly fun. As directed by Jon Turteltaub (shown below), from a screenplay by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber (from the novel by Steve Alten), the movie has a rather charming, "lived-in" look about it.

Though it's full of hi-tech lab equipment and underwater wonders, there remains a homemade quality about everything from the plot and dialog to the visuals and special effects. Instead of working against the movie, however, these all add to its charm and relative low-key effectiveness.

All that -- together with the good international cast assembled to bring the movie to life -- makes The Meg an enjoyable end-of-summer monster-movie romp, as we sit around entertaining ourselves while climate change creeps up destructively all around us. (As I can best recall, there's nary a mention of this is the film. But then, why spoil our fun?)

That cast includes Jason Statham, above, looking as fit as ever, if a tad older these days. There's one delicious scene in which one of the movie's heroines, played by China's Li Bingbing (below), enters Statham's room as our hero is clad only in his after-shower towel. Try as she might, she can't seem to take her eyes off his incredible form, and the movie delivers a very nice "objectification-of-the-male-body" moment.


The Meg also does a pretty fair job of presenting its pseudo-science in a form that goes down relatively easily. The beginning is full of semi-savvy information provided us so that we can understand what's going on as we tag along with our crew, exploring the deepest part of the ocean with funding provided by one the world's billionaires (played with the right amount of smarm-and-then-charm, along with his usual good humor, by Rainn Wilson).


The nice supporting cast includes Page Kennedy (at far left, above), Ruby Rose (next left), and Cliff Curtis (far right), all of whom turn in smart/specific performances. And a good word must be said for the adorable young actress, Shuya Sophia Cai (below with Statham), who plays wittily and expressively the daughter of Ms Li. Once the movie turns its attention to the Meg's attacking the frolickers at a nearby beach (including, yes, a cute little dog), we get the usual silly fun, some decimation and of course very little actual bloodshed (to uphold the film's family-friendly rating).

The movie's pacing is generally good, though ten minutes could easily have been cut to tighten things up a bit. The final word we see on screen (prior to the end credits roll) is a hilarious and simultaneous nod to both French art films and scary shark movies. It ends The Meg with a most appropriate hoot. Whoever came up with this witty idea deserves special thanks.

Thanks, however, are nowhere due to either Warner Brothers (who is distributing the movie) or the Cinemark theater chain, where last night's press-and-invited-general-audience preview took place in Boynton Beach, Florida. The movie was somehow wrongly and very stupidly projected onto the screen in a ratio in which the top, bottom and both sides of the screen were so cut off that we in the audience could not read any (or very little of) the explanatory visual information telling us where in the world the scene is taking place or what year it might be. And then, when a foreign language is being spoken in several scenes, literally all of the subtitles were also unable to be read.

I know this is Flori-duh, but, really: At a press and public preview screening? Doesn't anyone check these things in advance? Earlier in the day I attended a press-only screening of the Papillon remake which started, yes, one-and-one-half hours late at a local Regal cinema -- because, again, no one at Regal had bothered doing the work that needed to be done in advance. Is it any wonder, despite the inroads made via the maybe-soon-to-be-late-and-lamented MoviePass, that audiences continue to forsake movie theaters for home viewing?

Meanwhile, The Meg -- running 113 minutes and projected, I hope, a hell of a lot better where you'll see it than where we saw it -- hits theaters nationwide on Friday, August 10. Click here to find those nearest you.

Netflix streaming must-see -- EXTINCTION gives the idea of the "other" a real workout

Gosh, do we need a movie like this one now. In our age of Trump-fueled hatred toward anyone who's different  -- Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, and whoever else is not white shite -- along comes EXTINCTION, a new film from director Ben Young and writers Spenser Cohen, Brad Caleb Kane, and perhaps Eric Heisserer (who. if so, now goes uncredited on the IMDB), that gives "the other" the kind of workout this subject has not had in quite some time.

Extinction effectively turns inside out our expectations and assumptions and in the process forces us as gently and completely as possible to embrace that other because we have already so firmly put ourselves in its place.  This is an accomplishment I can't recall another movie managing, and certainly not this well. This is due to the smart script and direction but also to the fine performances of its leading characters, a father and mother -- played by Michael Peña and Lizzy Caplan (above and below) -- of a family under siege from alien invaders.

Though the movie begins with our hero having dreams about the very thing that's about to happen -- which already sounds a bit been-there-done-that -- once reality has made it self clear, so many plot points are suddenly explained that don't simply make sense but also seem to be an especially clever manner in which to have conceived and executed the story.

How good it is to see Mr. Peña in a leading role as a smart, caring family man. He's a perfect "everyman," which is just what the role needs, and Ms Caplan adds her usual spunk and charm to the proceedings. The scene in which the two of them first meet is as graceful, lovely and warm as anything you'll have seen -- and twice that, given the context here.

The supporting cast is fine, too, with Israel Broussard a standout as the unusual character named Miles with whom our current President could never begin to understand or identify. I hope I have not said too much already to result in a spoiler. Just stick Extinction on your Netflix queue and watch it ASAP. You're in for a wild action ride, especially in the first half of the film, and then, in the latter half, oh, boy. 
Oooooooooh, boy.

Ol Parker's MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN proves almost exactly what you'd expect

Who knew that ABBA has given us so many second- and third-rate songs? TrustMovies certainly didn't until viewing (and listening to) MAMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN, which has plenty of these, plus a reprise of a few of the group's greatest hits that were used in the original 2008 film version of this international legitimate-theater-blockbuster-turned-film.

The new addition is really a kind of celebration -- a second-rate one, yes -- but still a celebration of ABBA's enduring music and the supremely silly story engendered around that music in order to contrive a plot line for the now-famous musical.

As directed by Ol Parker (shown at right) in the sort of paint-by-numbers fashion that Jackson Pollack might have used, were he a paint-by-numbers guy, this new movie is so awful from its start -- an embarrassing school commencement scene set in Britain -- that this proves perhaps the right thing, after all, for the film then has nowhere to go but up. And so it does, in very slow, small increments until, by its finale, it has become almost OK. (It helps that, in that finale, we finally get to see Meryl Streep, shown at bottom, as a kind of fantasy/phantasm who delivers the movie's sweetest song.)

Otherwise, we're back again with those same three would-be fathers (Brosnan, Skarsgård and Firth, above), their sort-of daughter and her beau (Seyfried and Cooper, below), all of whom go through the hoops created for their character-less characters originally conceived by Judy Craymer and now fleshed out by Mr. Parker, along with Richard Curtis and Catherine Johnson.

The new twist is the by-now old saw of the "prequel," in which we're made privy to the doings of the younger version of the Streep character (Lily James, below) and how she came to have her dalliances with those three guys, whom we now view in their younger versions, too.

The plot, such as it is, has to do with Seyfriend's character reopening that hotel dedicated to her mom, while the movie flashes back and forth, past to present, without generating a lick of surprise or suspense. Unless you count the last-few-minutes appearance of Cher (below) in the role of Grandma, who gets to sing one of the film's better numbers, Fernando.

But no matter. The movie is supposed to be a celebration -- of ABBA's music and these characters whom some of us clearly love and want more of -- so those of you who want to celebrate will certainly do so. Meanwhile, the rest of us who accompany you to the cinema can enjoy the pretty people, the pretty scenery, and whatever other small favors this movie is able to deliver.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, from Universal and running 116 minutes, opened last weekend nationwide. To find the theater(s) nearest you, simply click here.

Alex Garland's ANNIHILATION proves pretty much the annihilation of Alex Garland

A sophomore slump for the record books in which the writer/director of the wonderful Ex Machina descends to ham-fisted, lugubrious and spell-it-all-out silliness, ANNIHILATION proves such a tiresome and obvious piece of science-fiction that you may have to watch Alex Garland's first foray into both writing and directing a second time, just to recall how classy, subtle, dark and intelligent a genre piece can really be.

His new film is dark, all right, but that's about all it has in common with its superior predecessor.

I admit to being completely befuddled as to why Mr. Garland, pictured at right, has chosen to be so tiresomely expository in terms of how he verbally explains so much to his audience. Initially, at least, he refrains from this, and it is not until maybe one-third of the way into this overlong, two-hour movie that we start getting the lectures by one character to another that make certain we understand what is happening plot-wise, "science"-wise and -- oh, yes -- morally speaking, too. Any ring of truth in terms of genuine conversation goes missing even as we're fed all this expository catch-up material.

Sure, the film is slow-moving (very, and it seems to grow slower even as it moves along), but intelligent adult audiences usually can put up with that, provided the plot and/or characters are strong enough to maintain interest. Here, the plot only grows more tiresome, while the characters are lucky to have a single defining feature.

Annihilation's plot has to do with a soldier husband (Oscar Issac, above) who disappears while on a top-secret mission then comes home to his scientist/professor wife (Natalie Portman, below) a mere shell of a man who then drops near-dead at the dining room table. So wife determines to discover what hubby was up to and what has happened to him.

This means becoming involved in that secret project, about which we learn much much more, and then traveling into something called "the shimmer" (below), about which we learn even more. Nothing looks promising in terms of anyone's survival here, including actually all of humanity. But on we go, as our Natalie joins a quartet of women who venture into this new kind of abyss, only to get picked off one by one. Hey, that's original!

Step by step everything that's going on is then explained to us, and the film -- which, throughout, has been a slough punctuated with a couple of scenes of suspense and slasher/monster thrills -- finally concludes with a bravura display of special effects that goes on so long that it achieves the kind of significant boredom that only CGI can these days manage.

The supporting cast supports as best it can, and Garland caries his theme home as expected. Perhaps he works better in the smaller scale of Ex Machina rather than in the much-bigger-budget realm of supposedly blockbuster sci-fi.

In any case, Paramount who is releasing this 120-minute movie, seems to have yet another dud on its hands. Too bad. The film hit theaters the last week in February and may still be playing at one or two near you. Click here to find out.

GODS OF EGYPT: The joyous spirit of Michael Powell's The Thief of Bagdad lives on!

What a cacophony of critical nonsense greeted the debut of the would-be blockbuster, GODS OF EGYPT, which you will be lucky to still find in theaters one week later. And what a shame the majority of today's critical establishment is so untutored in film history -- not to mention the joy that comes from watching a well-made and exciting kids' adventure film -- that they stupidly gave this very enjoyable visual knockout such a drubbing.

A number of our "cultural guardians" even claim that the movie is difficult to follow, which must say something pretty dismal about their own IQ. This is one of the easiest-to-follow films, not to mention the most delightful of roller-coaster rides, to hit screens in a long while. Directed by Alex Proyas (shown at right and no slouch in the "great visuals" department: The Crow; Dark City; I, Robot) and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (who also gave us the underrated Dracula Untold), the movie reminded me most of the rightly famous and now-classic 1940 film The Thief of Baghdad. Granted, it is nowhere near as special as that movie, but it does indeed adhere to many of the tropes, themes and fine style of the Michael Powell/Ludwig Berger/Tim Whelan film.

How can anyone who's seen both films not almost immediately recognize young Brenton Thwaites (above, center, right) as the film's delightful Sabu-like hero, Bek? The flying carpets and genie of the early film may have been replaced by today's special effects (the effects here really are quite special), but their use remains in the service of telling a fine story about the importance of love, quests, gods, mortals, life, death and, of course, doing the right thing. (That's the willowy and gorgeous Courtney Eaton -- center, left, above -- who plays Thwaites' love interest.)

In the gods department you'll find a whole raft of fine performers in both the good and the evil sections -- from Gerard Butler (above, left) and Elodie Yung (above, right) to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (below, right)

to none other than Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush, who plays Ra, the Sun God who must spend his days fighting off a very naughty, cloud-with-teeth-like monster from who-knows-where. (Mr. Rush handles this with his usual exemplary aplomb.)

If the movie seems to take awhile to find its footing and get into gear, I am not sure if this is actually the fault of the film itself, as much as it is our own for being simply so unused to seeing a good, old-fashioned fantasy/adventure like this one.

The movie may be all-green-screen all the time, but so far as eye-popping backdrops go, it looks like a billion bucks. You won't have seen this much imagination, color, and creativity going into fantasy-movie production values in a long time.

Compare what you see here, in fact, to the high-tech-but-pretty-ordinary crap dished out by so many of those Marvel franchises -- Iron Man, Avengers, Spiderman -- or much worse, that ridiculous abs-and-attitude movie, 300, in which all the backdrops looks almost the same. (One of the more special of the effects has to do with how much larger the gods register on-screen than do the humans -- even if, occasionally, the scale does seem a bit "off.")

Acting is on-target throughout, and the writing is just fine: The dialog and screenplay move everything along at a very fast clip, even as those themes of love, loss and redemption are given their due. There is a sweetness to this movie that escapes most fantasy blockbusters these days, and it is to be treasured, I think.

The monsters? They're quite fab, as well: fun and scary and created with extra flair and oomph. The movie may not be a classic, but it is so much better-than-expected in every way that to miss it on the big screen seems a shame.

It was hoped by the film's distributor, Lionsgate, that this would turn into another HungerGames/Divergent franchise. I guess not. But maybe there will be an after-life on home video, once cult world-of-mouth takes hold.  Click here to find out where these Gods are playing near you.