The Lone Ranger (2013)

Hi-yo Silver whatever … Johnny Depp headlines a new version of “The Lone Ranger” so long and eyesore messy, unnecessarily complex, and drunk on flimsy CGI, I don’t have the energy to relive it. Depp is one awkward Tonto, while Armie Hammer is the Ranger, a would-be hero overlooked in his own saga. Done. D

The Fall (2008) and Mirror, Mirror (2012)

Indian-born director Tarsem Singh’s gift of visual story-telling is near unsurpassed. He goes bolder and bigger than most filmmakers dare dream. Yet, his movies mostly are cinematic affairs for the eyes, with the brain left to defend for itself. “Cell” (2000) and “Immortals” (2011) fall in those categories. So goes it with two other of his films I watched back-to-back: “Mirror, Mirror,” a new take on “Snow White,” and “The Fall,” a fairy tale possibly aimed at adults who prefer movies weird and wireder.

“Mirror” only pretends to be a subversive take on the famous Grimm Fairytale as the opening minutes has Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen going all snarky on her Fairest of Them All step-daughter (Lily Collins), during a voice-over with some wildly cool stop-motion animation. I thought we were in for a dark cinematic upside-down cake treat: The story of a misunderstood queen about a poison-apple princess brat. But, no. It’s the same story told by Walt Disney and onward, but made so bright and fluffy, and with such movie set fakery, it smells of some flippant meta-movie joke against ticket-buying parents.

Only one scene involving marionette assassins after Snow and her dwarves hypes eye-popping Tarsem magic. The rest of the running time is dull as slush. Yes, Roberts has a hoot dishing one-lines and cruel judgments with a wide smile, but she’s never playing anything else than some inner-joke take on her apparent prima-donna spoiled movie star self. I can only guess her direction likely consisted of, “Just be yourself! But more!” 

Collins is drab, and -– cruel to say, I know -– not a bit fair. When she’s onscreen, the film dives, even during an early ball scene where Collins wears a white goose dress that strangely echoes Bjork’s Oscar outfit from 2000. Did Robert stipulate in her contact that she had to be the fairest and best-dressed on the set? One wonders. 

As the Prince, Armie Hammer (“SocialNetwork”) throws himself forehead deep into the role of a buffoon. At one point, he plays puppy love. Literally. Barking, panting and whining. I felt bad for him. C-

“Fall” is a fairytale adventure set inside the unlimited mind of an imaginative, wildly curious 6-year-old girl. It’s lovely to look at, a film unlike any that I have ever seen. Yet, that’s the kicker of this epic in-every-sense-of-the-word story. Director/co-writer Tarsem spent four years in two dozen countries making his film and every bit of work is onscreen. It’s all and only visual. It’s a shame “Fall” is not a solid film to put all the senses to work. 

The setup: Circa 1914, a movie stuntman (Lee Pace) lays bedridden at a Los Angeles sanitarium, injured after an onset incident has left him unable to walk. Riddled with anger, and heartbreak because his Hollywood girlfriend has left him for another man, Roy decides on suicide. He befriends a young girl (Catinca Untaru), herself recovering from a broken arm, and tells her a long, twisting tale about four adventurers (Pace among them, as The Masked Bandit) each seeking a kill-or-be-killed revenge vendetta against an evil king (Daniel Caltagirone, also playing the “another man.”) 

Untaru’s youngster listens, and we see the visuals inside her head played out on screen, including her mistaken rendering of an “Indian” as a warrior from India, not Roy’s intended stereotype of a Native American. There’s action, adventure, kidnapping, sword-fights, swimming elephants, an assassinated monkey, castles, desert landscapes, and lush jungles, all peopled by workers and residents surrounding the girl at the hospital. There’s Charles Darwin, too, a swashbuckling hero. Less-than-honest Roy has a hidden motive as spins his tale: He wants his young friend to bring him morphine pills from the supply closet. That’s his path to suicide bliss. 

It all mostly sounds very similar to a children’s film, certainly the plot is childlike, but the graphic violence is tough, and the film takes a hard-to-swallow tearjerker finale far too dark and violent for anyone younger than, say, 14. Who knows who Tarsem is targeting with all this doom and gloom, and redemption, and irony of life, and celebration of silent film. Not children. Not art house adults who would snicker at the heroics. My only guess, this is a film by Tarsem for Tarsem, and we are the incidental audience. 

Watch it for images, the dance sequences, the roving, flowing camerawork. Every shot is worthy of a picture frame. Just don’t expect a “Tree of Life” life-altering experience. Cool bonus points: Most of the scenes between Pace (poor sap starred in “Marmaduke”) and the adorably hard-to-understand Untaru are improvised, the actor playing quick off her rambling talk and mistaken readings that only a child can provide, unscripted. It works beautifully up into the film’s tone goes crocodile tears. Bravo beautiful effort, though. B-

J. Edgar (2011)

John Edgar Hoover was one of our nation’s most powerful guardians, who created the FBI, championed fingerprinting as a form of identification, and launched the very notion of criminal forensics. He remains the Holy Trinity of U.S. law enforcement. He did great things. He also was a control freak who drove his patriotic cop zeal so far up the flagpole, it turned from love of country to illegal and immoral bludgeon tactics not out of place in the Communist Russia that Hoover so loathed. His hunch or mood was law, the law be damned. He did terrible things. He kept files on and blackmailed presidents, Hollywood stars and corporate tycoons. How the hell can a movie about him be boring?!? This is it.

“J. Edgar,” the latest cinematic effort from Clint Eastwood, is a dead-eyed, soulless, filmed in shit-colored browns biopic unworthy of the man in the title. Directed by Eastwood and written by Dustin Lance Black – a gay leftist who penned “Milk” – this film should explode off the screen, polarize, and burn our conceptions. Recall “Nixon” or “Malcolm X.” They had balls. No balls here. Tackling Hoover is a tall order. No film could ever get it all. I could not do it. That anyone could try is surely of respect. But no love.

Black goes bust from the start as old Hoover is dictating the narrative of his life to various underlings, for a book of some sort, spilling his secrets… Wait, what? Hoover spill secrets? No. Worse, the agents question Hoover’s accuracy. Bullshit. No one questioned him. Still worse, the story jumps timelines throughout, Hoover at 70 at 19 at 35 at Gate 6F, and the edits kill all momentum. The scene of JFK’s assassination carries the impact of a burned pizza. As does the Lindbergh baby murder. That case is sliced and diced throughout the film. All the history and fascinating crime talk sinks. More bullshit: When Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover dons a dress as his dead mother – yes, we go there – it’s a cheap potshot of a rumor long disproved. And also hilarious, a contender for worse scene of the year. No joke.

And, yes, the film eyes Hoover’s debated sexuality, and as much as “J” tries to tackle the homosexuality slant as tippy-toes as possible, it’s undone by Armie Hammer (“Social Network”) who plays Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s confidant and reported lover as a wide-eyed swish. A cruel word, but it fits. It is not all bad. Black writes some beautiful bits about the absolute forbidden gay life of the time, a period all of our GOP presidential candidates long to bring back, and tells of a boy Hoover knew who committed suicide because he was bullied. As a gay. Judi Dench is Hoover's Bible-thumper bigot mom who says better dead than queer. Great performance, her psychologically whipping her boy because he dislikes girls. But, damn, does he have to dress like her? Is that not counter-productive, for gays, for Black? Such stereotype?

DiCaprio plays Hoover with all the Oscar Nomination power he can muster, and for that I never forgot I was watching a performance. (Dig Penn as Harvey Milk. Effortless.) DiCaprio is a fine actor -- he is -- but he does not have the gravitas, the sheer power that Hoover must have exulted, the fear factor. Not here. That said, Leo nails one scene where he declares his love for Tolson to himself. No sex, though, as Hoover is too repressed, or is it Eastwood? Whatever. Does not matter. When our two stars play old, they toddle around like drama majors doing “Odd Couple,” each smothered in terrible makeup. All the drama, gay and straight, seeps away.

It all ends with Hoover dead and the files – the thousands of files Hoover kept – shredded. There is no substance to right now, the sheer horror of what a guy like Hoover could do with cell phones and the Internet. (Hey, with Gingrich as president, we may find out.) Eastwood, Black and DiCaprio would be better if the screenplay were shredded. Hoover, too. Check out the 1950s Hoover/Hollywood propaganda flick “The FBI Story.” It’s so hilariously opportunistic and blindly in love with Hoover’s ego, and the America is God, I consider it a comedy classic. It tells more about J. Edgar than “J. Edgar.” Our nation, too. Always right. Eastwood -- a favorite of my life and forever, no matter his faults -- is just sagging of late. C