Locke (2014)

“Locke” is a movie-making stunt that wins its dare. Writer-director Steven Knight (he penned “Eastern Promises”) has fashioned a real-time thriller that follows a construction engineer –- played by Tom Hardy -– fighting to keep all he owns and loves as he drives 90 minutes from Birmingham to London to witness the premature birth of his third child. No guns involved. The damage is emotional. The pending child is the product of a one-night stand. The mother is frantic. Hardy’s Ivan Locke -– we only see him inside his BMW, interacting by phone –- declares himself in control and refuses panic. But he must inform his wife of his transgression, assure his two sons all is well, and track the status of his massive work project -– a skyscraper concrete pouring -– that costs untold millions. Tense and without a wasted second, “Locke” booms loud on Hardy’s fierce performance as a man whose hubris is as destructive as negligence, a trait worn by his dead father who produced Ivan out of wedlock. Knight traps us tight inside that BMW with Locke as his life shreds as the minutes tick by, the most valiant action righting one’s life errors. However futile. Seemingly small, “Locke” is epic. A

Much Ado About Nothing (2013)

Joss Whedon -– director of “Avengers,” creator of “Firefly” –- has adapted Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” into a light and airy, black-and-white big-screen trip. The result is less movie and more “you have been invited to a weekend theater party” at Whedon’s own house no less, with his TV friends (Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, and Clark “Agent Coulson” Gregg) performing off the cuff and in the kitchen where last night’s dishes sit unwashed. Adorable. See, this “Much Ado” -– you either know the famous comedy about sex, dirty war, and feminine politics, or you are a home-schooled lonely Bible freak -- reminds us that these plays were not high-brow work for snobs, but blasts of escapist fun for the masses. The cast riffs and experiments on the dialogue and gender-flips roles, and some of it works, and what sinks has the beauty mark of trying something different. Fillion’s “police force,” which in modern day would not dither over infidelity and womanly virtues, seem to be having more fun than any group of people onscreen all summer long. Now, about that “Avengers” sequel… A-

The Raven (2012) and Me and Orson Welles (2009)

Two famously eccentric American artists who burnt fast and hot get the fictional film treatment in “The Raven” –- with writer/poet Edgar Allan Poe playing super sleuth over a series of murders related to his writings –- and “Me and Orson Welles” -– with the actor/director as scoundrel muse to a plucky “High School Musical” hero. 

As Poe, John Cusack does that arched-eyebrow John Cusack thing he always does, and he’s flat out wrong in the role. The plot is a grisly rehash of “Se7en” stitched onto a carbon copy of Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes,” with a villain that’s dull as rag paper. Worse bit: Poe is shown playing with a pet raccoon. Director James McTeigue thinks he’s still filming “V for Vendetta.” Fawkes that. 

“Me” focuses on a teen drama protégé (Zac Efron) as he cons his way into a gig at the Mercury Theatre for the renowned staging of “Julius Caesar.” Christian McKay plays Welles as madman, genius, romantic, cad, screw-up, and artist, and brilliantly crushes every scene, but with “Tiger Beat” poster boy Efron in the lead pining for a smirking bored Claire Danes, the film sinks. 

Poe and Welles would torch these films. Raven: C- Welles: C+

Anna Karenina (2012)

I’ve not read Tolstoy’s phone-book thick novel “Anna Karenina,” but I know how Russian love stories end. Not well. The same holds true for Joe Wright’s Brit-heavy adaptation with Keira Knightley (they also did “Atonement” together) as the title aristocrat who rips late 19^th century rules and has an affair with an army officer (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to the anger of her bureaucrat husband (Jude Law). This is a wild-card visual beauty that plays on the Shakespeare adage that, “All the world’s a stage...” Much of the movie is set inside a theater with the characters moving from the stage out into the audience and up through rafters and balconies, sets changing around them. Scenes set at a farm where true love and hard work abound are shot with no artifice. Yes, Wright is saying the wealthy are fake, while the people of the land are true. Pretentious? I dug it. It’s the love triangle that disappoints: Taylor-Johnson -– looking like he should be playing live guitar at the vegetarian restaurant three doors down from the theater I was at –- is miscast as the officer who women swoon for. The scandalous romance, then, pales beside the sets and music. B-