Jack Reacher (2012)

In “Jack Reacher,” Tom Cruise is the coolest guy in the room who’s miles ahead of everyone else, can fight five guys no sweat, and when he walks by -– even at a Goodwill –- every woman swoons. The college girls, too. Yes, Cruise may be “playing” Jack Reacher, but really he’s spinning on his own ego. And since Reacher is one of those secret Army guys with no personality or background, why not let Cruise do so? He is the main attraction. Sorry Lee Child books fans. Here, Reacher investigates a mass murder carried out by an ex-Army sniper who we know is innocent because we saw another man (Jai Courtney) do the deed. Fear not, Reacher/Cruise will down every villain, right up to the one-fingered evil Blofeld cousin (famed director Werner Herzog) with an agenda so uninspired 007 would yawn. Not Reacher/ Cruise. He coolly threatens, scowls, and drives a Chevelle in a kick-ass car chase that’s a riotous hoot. All of this is carried out as a massacre plot that shies at the shock of violence to get a kid-friendly PG-13. But post-Sandy Hook, when a movie killer targets children, why are we not looking at an automatic R rating? B-

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

In a summer of superheroes run amok, “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is pure nirvana for anyone with an appreciation for art and history, and a chance to sit in a theater and be “wowed” to the back of your soul. Director Werner Herzog (“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”) is back in documentary mode here, talking heads and all. The Chauvet Cave is real, located in southern France uncomfortably close to nuclear plant and highways. Inside its walls are hundreds of images of animals and mass hunts, drawn by hand nearly 40,000 years ago, then taken over by bears (scratch marks on the walls) and then a second artist. It laid undisturbed for much of human history until discovered – almost stumbled upon – in 1994. Herzog also serves as narrator, interviewer and lighting tech, as access to the cave is limited. For long stretches, Herzog –cool voice – keeps his pie hole shut, and just lets his cameras glide over the artwork – etchings of bears and horses and rams, telling their own story. I got goose bumps. A

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

Nicolas Cage – the actor of “Wild at Heart” – has been missing for some time, replaced by a flaky, tired and boring stand-in in such garbage fare as “Bangkok Dangerous.” In the police thriller “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” Cage is once again thrillingly alive, electric, giving a high-wire act, and knocking every other player off to the sidelines. He drops out-there dialogue like “To the break of dawn!” with absolute relish, hitting every syllable in the strangest and darkest of ways.

This Werner Herzog-directed flick has nothing to do with Harvey Kietel’s 1992 flick “Bad Lieutenant,” except name and its general outline: A depraved, drug-addled police detective is on a fast train to hell as he investigates a disturbing crime. Here it’s the murder of a New Orleans family of illegal immigrants, apparently over drugs the caretaker was selling.

Cage’s Terence McDonagh is off the bat corrupt, but in a flash of kindness he saves an inmate from drowning in the 2005 Katrina floods. No good deed goes unpunished: Terence injures his back in the rescue. A doctor’s prescription of painkillers leads to hard drugs and so many crimes – blackmail, sexual assault, shakedowns and pointing guns at grannies. Let’s put it this way: Our hero has a “lucky crack pipe.” It’s telling of Terence’s flamed soul that his lowest point in the film is when his call girl lover (Eva Mendes) announces she’s going into rehab.

His back and shoulders hunched like a walking “7” and a gun shoved in his front belt like a calling card of a psychotic Western lawman of about 16, Cage hasn’t been this good in years: All big-eyes tender one minute with a baby and raging crazy the next, even scaring hardened gangsters. Cage’s eyes are glaring mad, and I’m not sure how he does it. I’m not sure I want to know. But the actor last seen in, I swear, 1997’s “Face/Off” is back. (For now. He is doing a “Ghost Rider 2” after all, a bunch of other garbage, too, God help us.)

This Herzog tale is dark as hell, grisly violent, and strange – David Lynch strange – but it’s also wickedly funny. Terence hallucinates creeping spying lizards, and as the film reaches its climax – well, let’s say, I’m not quite certain reality is all there. The ending, actually, is quite hysterical, if you can get past the horrible acts Terence commits. This might be a difficult film for some to stomach. I dug it. A brimstone comedy from hell. And the most exciting big-screen police thriller I’ve seen in ages, good news for a genre that has played it as safe as an episode of “Law & Order” for too long. New Orleans has never, to my knowledge, been this gritty onscreen before. This ain’t Bourbon Street fun and partying. It’s a third world country, where signs of mass death from a deadly storm are marked – literally – on nearly every home. A-

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010)

Indie film god Werner Herzog directed “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done,” a fictional take on a real San Diego man who slew his mother with a sword because God told him to, or so he thought. But David Lynch’s vibe is wholly present. He produced this low budget, quiet psychological horror film. There’s an unreal dream quality to the drama, an off-time click to the speaking roles, and yet the setting and actions strive to be realistic. When the killer (Michael Shannon of “Revolutionary Road”) apparently takes hostages, a SWAT team is called. These men are professional and calm, as they are in such cases. (As a reporter I went to a dozen or more hostage situations, I never saw Hollywood gung-ho theatrics.) More so, there is no violence. The death of the mother (Grace Zabriskie of “Twin Peaks”) is off screen. “My Son” focuses on cause and effect, and psychology, and character. Not gore. What a fine treat. Shannon again nails a man bent beyond madness, with no way to see right anymore. B+